The Lost
by ThemyThink
Summary: They shouldn't be alive, the chance of them surviving something like that was astronomically small, but they did. Now what?
1. Chapter 1

The Lost

AN: I just had an idea like this, ill probably continue it because I wrote two A4 format pages full of plot points and notes from my one idea moment. But if not then sorry. Please let me know what you think, motivation is important for me.

„ _Ambushes are like love; it happens when you least expect it"_

 _Unknown_

Quiet, that's the defining quality of the UNSC Preston's Will during the night time on the agreed upon clock of the ship. There was a skeleton crew manning the bridge and only the marines guarding the ship had any real duties, to stand guard and look at the wall. Everything else could be handled by the main computer, the navigation, sensors, even cleaning bots and maintenance were done by it.

The only officers present on the bridge was the helmsman and the weapons officer. Although even they were not doing their jobs but were busy with more…..carnal activities with the weapons officer bent over the main holotable.

The Preston's Will was cruising through space at maximum cruise speed, the Halberd class destroyer was a rarer variant of its kind. While most of the halberds in service had only the default escort package on them with the extra armaments and weapons, this one was an armed special transport variant. Its destination was a small ONI research station far behind the current enemy lines.

The ship had made this run for half a dozen times in the last two years, never encountering a single covenant ship. Their successes had made them complacent, confident that this run would be the same as the last one, and the one before that one.

It might as well have gone like that; the Preston's Will would have passed through the system from one end to the other to shake any chance of tracking them via gravitational anomalies. Everything might have gone well if not for a single mistake made by the two people on station at the command bridge.

Their 'activities' had brought them over to the communications panel of the holo table. The weapons officer's ass sat on it as her lover pounded into her, moving her back and forth on the panel, cycling through contacts until she accidentally touched the transmit button with her hand when she was trying to steady herself.

The hail did not reach anyone; they were in a barely charted system that the UNCS had barely begun surveying when the war broke out. But the system still tried to make a connection, it activated the communications array and sent out a ping, trying to find a beacon or a stronger array it could access to bounce the signal and extend the range.

That ping which lasted maybe two or three seconds was enough to attract some unwanted attention. In the next system over was a Covenant battlegroup that was patrolling for human activity, trying to find any colonies that had been passed over with the first campaign.

The battlegroup was small by covenant standards, only a single CPV class heavy destroyer and three CAR class frigates. But for a single Halberd class destroyer, a ship class that hunted in packs, it was the stuff of nightmares.

As soon as the covenant picked up the brief signal, they were like sharks that had sensed blood in the vast waters of space. No delay was made in activating their slipspace drives and moving towards the supposedly empty system.

The two on duty officers were blissfully oblivious of what they had just inadvertently done, resuming their fucking until they both finished. The two held onto each other for a few love filled moments, only separating when one of them saw that it was almost time for the shift change. They both busied themselves with erasing any sign of their actions.

When the computer monitoring the sensors started blaring warnings about slipspace eddies with covenant characteristics the two on duty officers jumped into their duties with a practiced ease. But they were still somewhat shocked, they were compromised, even though the route was supposed to be clear.

What really made the officers worried was when out of those eddies came four covenant ships, a destroyer with three frigates as escorts. Now they were in full panic mode, punching the emergency alert that set the ship on condition one immediately.

The covenant ships were still about a hundred thousand Kilometers away, letting the officers gather and for the marines and sailors to arm themselves to repel boarders. The dual MAC had their warmup procedures activated for without them the ship would not have a chance.

In the next minute the rest of the main bridge crew filed into the small room. The sensors officer was the first one in, rushing to his terminal and without pause started shifting through incoming data, trying to get any information that would help in the coming fight. Then came the communications operator, throwing a dirty glance towards the on-duty officers when she saw the puddle on her console. Last but not least was the captain, William Adama who strode into the bridge in a calm step, even though his breathing showed that he had ran there.

"I want an update now, enemy strength analysis, systems report, ETA until engagement range, slipspace drive capacity, I want it all in the minute."

The bridge crew of the Preston's Will got to work immediately, wasting no time on useless formalities. The sensors officer was the first to complete the task.

"Enemy force composition is one CPV class heavy and three CAR class lights. They have full shields and zero armor scarring and patch-ups. They are fresh."

The next was the weapons officer.

"MAC at 36% charge, ETA until 100% is one minute twenty seconds if reactor output staysat current levels."

The communications officer turned around in her chair, giving a sigh before giving her own report.

"Communications are jammed, even if we send out a distress beacon it will be weeks before it reaches the nearest friendly forces.

The last was helm, he looked sad and resigned. Like he knew that they were not going to make it.

"Slipspace drive at 1% charge, ETA is one hour forty minutes."

All the officers had turned turned to Adama, waiting for their orders, hoping against hope that he has some sort of plan to get them out of the situation.

"Helm, bring us 60 degrees hard to starboard, cut power to engines after 20 second burn, weps, use the extra power in charging the main cannons. Comms, just in case drop a distress beacon informing command that we fell under attack. Sensors, mark the heavy as hostile H1 and lights as hostile L1 through L3, inform me when they change course."

All of them turned away from the captain, busy with the tasks assigned to them. All of them were afraid, they knew what Adama meant with the distress beacon, command had to know that there was a covenant presence here, whatever the cost. But even when they were afraid, they still followed orders, still clinging to the small chance of getting out alive.

The ship jolted, inertial dampeners struggling to compensate for the sudden shift in momentum. Maneuvering thrusters on the port side were firing at full burn, trying to bleed off the speed from the previous heading. The full burn lasted for twenty seconds, just as Adama had instructed. The new heading took them towards a shattered dwarf planet with massive asteroids scattered around it.

"H1 is accelerating, L1 through L3 have taken up standard escort positions, ETA until they have us in weapon range is two minutes thirty seconds."

Adama just smiled at that, glad that his own predictions were true.

"Weps, Mac full charge ETA?"

"thirty seconds', captain."

"sensors, take a deep scan of the asteroid belt, give me its mineral composition."

"Aye captain."

"Enemy has launched fighters, swarm approaching the 100 mark."

That made a bad situation even worse. A Halberd class destroyer only had 8 dual mounted fifty-millimeter anti air guns, each taking a couple of seconds to down a seraph even with an A.I assisting the targeting, which they don't have. A swarm of that size could overwhelm lone ships with ease.

"Weps, stagger vent archer pods one through eleven, one missile per pod. Keep it cool and be ready to remotely detonate them."

"Acknowledged, venting archers one through eleven. Boosters are disengaged and cool."

"Comms, open a line to engineering and tell them to push the reactor to one twenty output for thirty seconds, they are clear to use the emergency coolant. Helm, you have thirty seconds of engine power, punch it."

"Will do."

"yes sir. "

The ship lurched ahead again, gaining speed but not enough to outrun the fighters, only to delay the inevitable. The covenant fighters, seeing that the human ship was adding speed did the same, boosting forward and starting to catch up to the lone ship even faster than before.

In moments they were within the fading ion trail of the destroyer, partially blinding themselves for a better shot at the engines of the human vessel.

"Detonate, archer missiles one through eleven."

"Yes sir."

The archer missiles, normally only effective against covenant ships when launched in hundreds or thousands completely ripped the fighters apart, the small shields only meant to deflect fighter grade weapons and point defenses were stripped by the nuclear explosion which was even stronger than normal because of the unused fuel in the missiles as well.

In a blink of an eye the covenant lost over two hundred fighters that had tried to swarm the lone destroyer and had thus overextended themselves from their motherships.

"I think they are pissed sir."

"They better be, we just wiped out their fighter wings."

Indeed, the covenant now looked pissed, their engines took on a brighter hue of blue as they rocketed forward. Plasma even now being concentrated into torpedoes on the purple painted hulls of the aliens.

"MAC one and two at full power. Capacitors holding."

Adama looked relieved at that, even he didn't want to face the covenant without a big gun or two. Nor did he want to risk overheating his main reactor too much.

"Comms, have engineering tune down reactor output to 80% until temperatures normalize, then back to full power, keep the superheated coolant contained as long as possible. Helm, reroute as much power as possible into the main engines, get us through the asteroid field."

The human ship lurched forward for the third time, now reaching speeds that threatened to slag its engines with the intensity needed to keep the speed up. The small ship swooped through the asteroid field, pushing aside smaller chunks of rock with its heavy armor plating and dodging the bigger ones.

The covenant ships were only a minute behind, barely out of the weapons range of the destroyer, not that it would have done any good as the MAC guns were pointed in the other way. They didn't bother with dodging, instead they plowed through the field, trusting their shields to keep them safe.

Captain Adama got out of his chair and waltzed over to the tacmap.

"I need those deep scans miss Scarlatina."

The blue asteroids displayed on the 3D map turned into a myriad of colors. Yellow and purple being the most prominent ones.

"Yellow is aluminium, red is iron and purple is Titanium. The rest is a mix of metals too elaborate to count off."

Adama looked at the holotable, deep in thought. He moved around some settings and did some math in his head.

Meanwhile the covenant had been gaining on the human ship, now they were close enough for the covenant destroyer to fire off the two torpedoes collected in its anterior. The first splashed against an asteroid scant seconds after leaving the projector, the magnetic guidance system not good enough to avoid it. The second met the same fate as the first, impacting one of the biggest asteroids in the vicinity.

The force of the torpedo changed the spin of the asteroid, forcing one of the frigates into dodging into a smaller one.

Adama suddenly had a smirk on his face.

"Weps, fire full salvo at each of the asteroids I'm marking at these specific angles, fire as fast as possible."

The weapons officer had a confused face for a second before he just shrugged and started inputting the target data. Moments later the twenty missile pods on the heavy transport variant of the Halberd class opened up and spewed out a missile each, all of them flying into the same place, trying to hit their target at the same time, three seconds later, and another salvo exited the missile pods, and another, and another.

The covenant ships bunched up, overlapping their point defenses so that as few missiles as possible would get through.

Now picture the surprised faces of those aliens when those missiles that would have only scratched their shields impacted the asteroids around them, scattering a lot of fast moving rock debris that impacted the bunched-up covenant ships. One of the bigger asteroids impacted the by then weakened shields of a CAR frigate, impacting on the side, pushing the frigate into a still stationary asteroid and squishing it between the two.

Another had its shields stripped by a moderate sized asteroid and a bad dent was left in the superstructure where the pile of metal and rock hit it.

The covenant heavy destroyer and last undamaged frigate came out of the cloud of wildly flying asteroids with shields shining at full brightness. The ships were now in eachothers prime firing range. Only problem was that the Preston's Will was facing the wrong way with its main guns.

"Helm, initiate anchor turn."

All over the ship thrusters flared, taking a turn that if done any faster would have ripped the ship in half. Even though the maneuver had been pre written by a smart A.I to be as safe as possible some inner supports still collapsed from the pressure of a 500 meter ship essentially turning on a dime.

"Target L2 with MAC 1, fire at will, secondary batteries, barrage fire."

The unmistakable sound of a MAC round leaving the barrel of the spinal mounted main gun was heard throughout the ship, followed by a salvo of deck guns a second later. The shot flew true towards the covenant frigate, at first the deck gun rounds flattened themselves completely against the energy barrier after which the mac round smashed through the flickering barrier of energy and cored the purple abomination of a spaceship.

But the covenant heavy destroyer had not been idle, no sooner had the rounds left the human ship that the energy projector under the destroyer came to life, shooting out a thin energy projectile that cut through a portion of the human vessel, exposing multiple decks to vacuum, spilling out both crew and equipment and severing some systems.

"Helm, all ahead full, ramming speed. Weps, deploy deck guns and return fire with everything you have, open up missile pods one through twenty, full spread."

The spearhead-like human ship sped towards the covenant ship, intending on ramming the hostile. By that time the damaged CAR frigate had joined the fight and fired its starboard torpedoes which honed onto the Preston's Will. This time there were no astroids big enough to intercept the plasma torpedo, so both impacted against the hull of the human ship, one hitting the wound caused by the earlier energy projector.

"Captain, I just lost control over the slipspace drive, sensors say its charging at an exponential rate and that it is preparing to initiate jump procedures."

"How in the…"

"I don't know captain; the drive room just took a direct hit from a plasma torpedo. I'm happy that we still have a ship left."

The ships momentum was not stopped by the blobs of plasma so it still continued onwards, plowing through asteroids. Then it impacted the covenant ship.

The Sharpish point of the UNSC craft smashed through the shields of the covenant ship, piercing the outer plating and digging through it.

Adama allowed another small smirk to tug his lips.

"Fire the main gun, let's see how they like being stuffed by the UNSC."

The bridge crew let out a small smile at that. The weapons officer smiling gleefully as he activated the firing sequence on the MAC. That grin fell as a red error message was displayed on the screen before him.

"Sir, the cannon is bent at the front because of our ram, firing MAC 2 would take it out of operation until we can get back to a shipyard."

Adama didn't even contemplate it, he knew that they were going to die if he didn't fire that gun, and there is no further use for a big gun if you are dead.

"Fire anyway!"

As Adamas fist hit the arm of his command chair the weapons officer flinched. There goes one of his babies.

"Commence firing, override: Echo-Lima-Zulu-India-Uncle-March."

The error message disappeared from the screen, replaced with a loading screen that went away just as fast as it came.

"Override acknowledged, weapons officer Evans. Commencing firing."

Everyone on the ship was suddenly thrown back by the cannon firing. The front of the ship was partially ruptured, the second MAC warped so much that it was obvious that it would not be firing anytime soon.

The slug passed from one ship to the other, shredding the softer innards of the offending destroyer, piercing the reactor and sending it into critical condition. Seconds after, it exploded. The explosion vaporized the covenant destroyer and sent both the remaining covenant frigate and the UNSC destroyer flying wildly in the asteroid belt.

The Preston's Wills bridge was washed with red, all of the alarms blaring as the artificial gravity system failed under such a massive strain. Everyone was pressed into their chairs, barely able to draw breath as the gravity that was supposed to help them run the ship was now trying to kill them.

Then the sensors officer glimpsed something on her display and her eyes went wide in fear.

Just then the previously unstable slipspace drive decided it had had enough and flew out of its mounting. The highly unstable drive impacted the wall adjacent to it, squishing an engineer that was trying to keep it secure in its mounting.

Slipspace drives are barely understood by humanity, nobody can claim full mastery over the field of travel in alternate dimensions, so nobody can actually say what happened when the warped drive core activated. Without its housing it no longer had a steady supply of power, nor stability. Because of that it is a sheer miracle that the drive formed the portal in the path of the ships spin, right before it impacted a lather large asteroid. Even more surprising is that the ship was not torn to shreds in the unstable rift of dimensions. What defies understanding is the last miracle, that the ship even exited the rift.


	2. Chapter 2

AN: First, i want to apologize for taking a while longer than i thought i would, was way too lazy. Second, i want to thank Taff, Squid and Dee for helping me on this thing, without you guys this chapter would be a shadow of what it is. I know my storytelling is not the greatest so putting up with me must be a challenge for those wonderful people. Anyways, enjoy the chapter.

Red, everything was red: the ceiling, the floor, the walls, even the guy in marine armor floating in front of him was dark red all over, especially the pipe stuck through his chest. Everything was hazy as well and he felt weird, like someone had given him an entire bottle of ambrosia and he had drunk it.

Everything was kind of floaty as well. His coffee, for instance, was flowing out of his cup in a continuous stream, while still being upright. Then again, the command consoles were above him so it was probably not upright.

Then the haziness of his mind subsided a bit and he snapped back to the dead marine, no person can survive a pipe through the spine and heart. The walls were red because of a combination of the same guy's blood splatters, at least he hoped it was that guys, and the red emergency lights.

"What the fuck..?"

He was floating in the ceiling of his once pristine and organized bridge, now covered in blood, floating objects and blown out monitors. His bridge crew were floating around like him and one of his guards was dead via a pipe that William had no idea where it had come from.

And then the artificial voice of the ships main computer decided to make his day even worse.

"ARTIFICAL GRAVITY REINITIALISING"

"OH SHIIIIT!"

* **THUD** *

He impacted the central holotable with his stomach, knocking the air out of his lungs and leaving him wheezing. his bridge crew were luckier, they fell to the floor and they seemed to be breathing - except for the guy with the pipe, he was just bleeding all over the floor, the bastard was making an even bigger mess of his bridge. And apparently he was in a quite compromising position with the weapons officer who had landed with her head on his crotch.

And as if the universe just wanted to say another 'fuck you' to Adama, his own coffee mug fell on his head, shattered and he got showered by the hot life-giving beverage.

"God, where ever you are, I both hate you and love you at the same time."

Then he heard someone stirring, it was the weapons officer of course. She raised her head groggily and looked up for a moment, then down to see what she was laying on. Then back up, only to slap him in the face. As soon as she did that she blushed and started stammering apologies, understanding who she just hit.

"Sor…sorry captain….its jus…my head and your uhh….sorry?"

Adama just let his head hit the deck and mumbled to himself.

"I take it back god, I just plain hate you."

Adama pushed himself up against the holotable and looked around. Most of his crew was getting up, except for the pipe marine, the messy bastard.

"I want a status report systems, casualties, hull integrity, I want it all on the main monitor. And get me a system scan ASAP. Also, I need a new coffee"

Everyone groaned an 'Aye aye' and got to work, those with working consoles started running system diagnostics and those without one pulled out an emergency display pad that was connected to the machinery and functioned like the actual screen does.

"MAC 2 is out of operation; coils are burned out in their entirety and the tip is warped. No fixing it ourselves. Missile bays A through H are empty and 50 mill is green, deck guns are operational and at yellow on ammo."

"Main sensor array is down, must have been destroyed in the ramming. Backup array is coming online in five minutes. Internal sensors show that Deck 4 is compromised and we have leaks on decks 2, 6, 9 and 14. Hull integrity is at yellow and red in the bow. Also, launch bay 2 is totaled."

"Still getting reports but we have sustained casualties: twenty-three marines and eleven sailors confirmed dead. Repair teams are patching up the leaks at this very moment."

A silence fell over the bridge for a moment to honor the fallen.

Then everyone went back to work.

"And can someone get a corpsman over here for the guy is bleeding all over my floor."

The other marine was still getting up, looking dizzy as hell, then his sight fell to his partner and he fell down again, hitting his face on a console and blacking out.

"And get a medic here as well."

Adama walked over to the unconscious marine and pulled him next to the door and put his head on the cool metal.

"And someone get me that damn coffee already."

He walked out of the bridge towards his quarters, leaving the bridge crew to direct the work efforts.

Then the whole ship rocked like an asteroid had just impacted it. Then the alarms started ringing with his sensors officer yelling on the intercom.

"WE HAVE AN UNKNOWN SHIP HARDDOCKING, PLASMA CUTTERS HAVE BEEN REPORTED TO BE CARVING THROUGH AIRLOCKS A10 THROUGH H4. MARINES ARE TO REDEPLOY TO THESE LOCATIONS, PREPARE FOR BOARDING."

Adama just sighed and did a 180 turn and jogged back to the bridge, All the while cursing to himself.

"Fuck you god, just can't give me a break."

Private Mccullen had just started to recover from flying around the corridor. Half of his squad was still groggy and his lieutenant was lying next to the airlock with his head at a weird angle. But that was not the private's main concern. No, his main problem was that he and the remainder of his squad were dragging their dizzy comrades back to their previous defensive position, escaping from the airlock that had sparks from a plasma cutter flying off it.

The marines dove behind the deployable cover and pulled the guy impaled on the barrel of the machine-gun off the gun and cleared off the barrel. Him and the four other people awake and aware took positions behind the titanium sheet that extended from the wall, Tamm took position behind the mg and aimed it at the airlock.

So there they were, not even engaged with the enemy but the sergeant and lieutenant were already dead.

Great, just fan-fracking-tastic. Mccullen pulled a grenade from his belt and threw it in the air, only to catch it again.

"Okay, here they come! prepare your welcoming gifts to the fucks!"

The other marines also unclipped their grenades, Griff pulled out her individual grenade launcher and started loading in a high explosive round when Hammond pulled it out of her hand and gave her another one. That one did not have the red stripes marking a high explosive round but a black stripe.

"Is that what I think it is?"

Hammond just grinned at that as Griff dumbfoundedly loaded it into her rifle. Then he pulled out another two of them from one of his numerous chest pouches.

"That they are. 40-millimeter concussion grenades, restricted to spartans and ODST. Got these bad boys from the golf company requisitions officer with a bet, but was saving them for a special occasion. Make them count."

Mccullen patted him on the back, happy to at least have a surprise for the fucks breaching them. As the mood was lightening a bit, the one thing that they were afraid of happened - the irritably bright light of the plasma cutter disappeared, only to be replaced by a silence.

Then a soft * _thunk_ * was heard, giving the well trained marines the chance to duck fully behind their cover.

 ***BOOM***

The heavy-duty airlock flew through the air for a few seconds, impacting the ground metres away before skidding a few more. As it stopped, the marines poked their head out from behind their cover, only to be greeted to a sight that was so bizarre, so freakish that if they were not used to fighting aliens would have left them gaping… It was a giant fucking pig…. On two legs….. carrying an axe in its weirdly human hands.

The pig…alien thing yelled out a war cry (Well, more like a long piggy squeal) and then it charged with its axe raised in the air.

"LIGHT IT UP!"

Tamm squeezed the trigger on the machine-gun, spraying the charging piece of pork with a quick two second burst. The first thing to leave the barrel was not even a bullet, it was a piece from the stomach of the sergeant who got impaled on the gun. The piece of meat flew at the speed of a bullet, pierced the piggy's eye and liquefied its brain. The rest of the bullets punched some more holes in the creature but the killing shot was from a piece of their sergeant. One of the few men who has gotten a posthumous kill on an alien.

The mass of pork collapsed to the ground boneless, revealing two or three dozen or so stunned aliens who could not stop staring at their fallen comrade. There were aliens of all kinds there: some with two weird tails coming out of their head and in a myriad of different colors, others were some wrinkly guys that had spikes sticking out of their faces also, in the back there was something that looked like a cross between a carpet and a chow chow dog.

The silent moment passed as the first spike guy lifted his gun and immediately ate lead from Mccullens rifle. The trio of rounds from his battle rifle sliced through the things chest and threw it to the ground.

The whole corridor exploded into activity and suddenly there were multicolored bolts of plasma flying from the boarders side, only to be answered by a single 40-millimeter grenade that impacted in the middle of the hostiles.

The concussive grenade is a strange thing. No big explosive charge so it isn't a standard grenade, no flash so it is not a flashbang, but it is still a very lethal piece of equipment. A grenade that solely uses a concussive wave to incapacitate and kill its enemies. The three boarders closest to the grenade were simply ripped to shreds.

The largest piece remaining intact of them was the size of a hand.

The next few were dead instantly, their brains liquefied and their internal organs ruptured. Their bodies were thrown around like ragdolls, some splattering on the wall, leaving multicolored splats of blood on the wall. The initial wave that was amplified by the narrow corridor dissipated enough that it wasn't lethal anymore, instead throwing the ones farther from the impact site to the ground or into the walls, killing another as its neck snapped. The wave of shrapnel that followed piercing another through the face and chest, cutting up quite a few other nonlethally.

Even the marines were blown on their asses but they were fast to recover, being further away from the ground zero of the explosion. They got on their feet and after a second of regaining their wits they split up. Griff and Mccullen advanced down the hallway to make sure the enemy was dead and Tamm stayed behind with Hammond to cover them if they needed it.

Griff and Mccullen advanced forward, slowly walking around the pig in the center of the corridor and just in case placing an extra round in its head. After they got around the alien they found their first live enemy. It was one of the spiky people. It was curled into a ball, hands covering its ears and some thick brownish liquid flowing out of its head and through the fingers trying to stop the bleeding. Griff shot the alien in the head, silencing its cries of pain.

That's what they did, just walked through the corridor. At first there was a bullet fired every second or so to make sure nobody played opossum but the farther they made it the less bullets they used because there was nothing to spend it on. Everyone was thrown forwards or backwards when the grenade blew or turned into a bloody smear on the wall. Then they made it to the airlock where the number of intact bodies started increasing again. By the time they made it near to the end of the hapless aliens Hammond and Tamm had joined them to not separate too much.

Near to the end there were some spiky guys trying to push themselves up only to get shot by the marines. The last one was the big furry creature. The marines stopped for a second to observe the beast, it was slightly bloodied by a piece of shrapnel in its chest but it did not seem to have pierced too deep.

Tamm decided to be the first to open his mouth

"What the fuck is that thing...? Hey Hammond, did your mother forget to clean her living room carpet or something?"

* _Thwack*_

"Ow, what was that for!?"

"My mother is a nice lady; you should know that after she made all of us that natural chicken."

"Amen, she's is a saint. Never had actual grown meat before."

The alien decided that it was a great time to stop playing opossum and roared some obscene battle cry that sounded like someone loudly gurgling mouthwash. It swept its legs along the floor, taking the feet out from under Griff and Mccullen, throwing itself onto its two feet with the same move.

It raised its weird bulky and techy looking crossbow, making its tip glow green for a moment, just before it was literally cut in twain by an almost solid wall of lead. Hammond was on one knee with his SAW supported by his left hand while it was pressed to his right elbow and his right hands index finger was on the trigger. The Barrel was still smoking slightly from the burst it had spat out.

"Fuck me, I don't think that thing liked being called a walking carpet."

Mccullen, Tamm and Hammond burst out laughing at the young woman's outburst. Only silenced by a large green bolt flying out of the furballs crossbow and impacting the wall… and denting the now blackened metal.

"We better call this in. We have a perfect opening into the enemy ship."

Mccullen knelt down while his squad mates circled him, all of them taking cover behind the torso piece of the dead big angry rug. He pushed his left arm against the com button on his helmet to connect to the main channel.

"Command, this is Lima squad. Boarders repelled at airlock B-4, enemy attacking wave defeated, requesting backup to press into the enemy ship. We have 2 KIA, the Lt and sergeant are down, I am the acting officer."

It only took a second for the Major in charge of the ships marines to answer to their comm.

"Negative Lima squad, I cannot spare any more marines anywhere, we are spread thin as it is. Hold position, we already have an ODST strike team handling the enemy.

The nice thing about being an ODST over a normal marine was that you get the best equipment, the best weapons and the best armor. While normal marines would die when exposed to the vacuum, ODST can just take a leisurely stroll in space.

That's what the group of 40 ODST were doing at this very moment.

They were crossing onto the enemy ship via one of their docking ports that acted much like a bridge over for them. The hostile ship they were sent to subdue looked like someone had taken inspiration for it from a hammerhead shark with its wide bow where for some reason the bridge was located.

But really? Who puts the bridge of a ship so close to danger as the front of the ship is? The only thing even worse would be to make the bridges only connected to the hull of the ship via a tower that is easy to bomb and shoot at.

But despite the strange design the ODST were walking forward towards the bridge, using their magnetic boots to not float off. Trying to not step on the areas where previous battles had cracked armor plating and exposed wiring from which the ODST stayed away from in fear of being detected or making something explode by accident.

It took them only a few minutes to reach the elongated bow where the main viewport of the bridge was at. They attached cables to the hull just above the viewport to rappel down. While some of them were doing that, others were attaching breaching charges to the translucent material that made up the viewport of the bridge. The charges were made just for this, to breach through a meter or more of hardened glass.

Then when they were done they attached themselves to the cables and the guy with the Lieutenant bars pressed the detonator, making a brief burst of flame burst out of the charges and a loud *bang* as they detonated. The brief gout of flame was followed by a large amount of glass debris. A moment later followed the atmosphere of the room and a few aliens and...humans in orange uniforms. Those immediately passed out from the deadly effects of the vacuum of space.

Just as the armor plating started sliding into place the 40 ODST repelled down into the Bridge, detaching themselves from the lines just as they were snapped by the emergency shutters. The bridge crew of the vessel was mostly incapacitated by the sudden exposure to vacuum.

"Knock knock bitches."

As if waiting for that cue the shock troops of the UNSC opened up on the strangely large bridge crew of the ship, taking great care not to shoot any of the consoles in fear of activating or breaking something. The cavernous room was cleared out without any casualties on the attacking side as the only ones armed on the defending side were a few paranoid individuals with a blaster strapped under their console and even then, that just made them a priority target.

A few of the crew surrendered but they were in the minority because the attack came so suddenly to them. Those that did were promptly rifle butted to the face and tied up with riot grade zip ties that could hold a fully-grown elite in place. A pair of men were left behind to guard the bridge and the prisoners.

To avoid getting bottled up in one place the ODST rushed out of the bridge doors and divided into smaller sections of four men who traversed down the two separate passages until they came to a crossroads, splitting up again and again until only one section was per corridor.

Short sporadic bursts of gunfire erupted through the ship, signaling a brief collision between the opposing forces, collisions which, more often than not were in favor of the elite ODST teams that fell upon confused and disorganized crewmembers. The most that those teams suffered were a few wounded who were hit by the weapons of the defenders but the few bolts that did hit dissipated on the heavy plate that was designed around tanking the slower but more powerful covenant plasma bolts.

The chaos got even worse as the second team breached the hanger and promptly captured most of the pilots and engineers milling about the hangar, blissfully unaware of what was going on as the nerve center of the ship was neutralized. The crew in the hangar was not even armed because all of the armsmen were off fighting the UNSC marines at the docking tubes.

Along with the prisoners the fifteen-member attack team captured the entire air wing of the ship. A total of twelve battered but highly modified looking dart or V-shaped craft with another two almost pelican sized craft which had upwards folding wings.

The hangar team split up just like the bridge team did, leaving only a few men behind to guard the huge space and forming up into smaller sections to cover more ground. The ship was now mostly under the control of the ODST's as they claimed the last of the critical points of the ship when a section from the bridge team breached and cleared the engineering compartment of the ship.

On board the UNSC destroyer the boarders suddenly found themselves in a crossfire between marines in entrenched positions who are armed with machineguns and ODST strike teams that converged on the different pockets of resistance, cutting them off from each other and thus turning a stalemate into a slaughter for the encircled attackers.

Mass surrender followed as very soon the encircled boarders understood that they had no chance as the noose was ever tightening around them seeing as the only cover they could use were their own dead or dying comrades. Soon there were long lines of prisoners being escorted to the brig of the two ships because the destroyer did not have enough room to accommodate them and some were even put on ice in the cryo bay with the doors magnetically sealed to prevent any accidentally thawed prisoners from escaping.


	3. Chapter 3

AN: This chapter has been brought to you only thanks to the superhuman capabilities of Tafferling, a woman who has so much on her plate but still finds time to beta my story next to her own work, which is great by the way. You guys should check her out. So thank Taffer for being great and putting up with me. And you shall probably be cursed by everyone who likes this story because you reintroduced me to dying light which takes a lot of time from my writing.

McCullen was walking down the hallway of the captured frigate, trying not to wince every time the rusted plating creaked under his or Griffs footsteps. Although the crew of the ship had surrendered, the UNSC had learned from the insurrection and now searched every captured vessel from top to bottom because it only took a single saboteur to wreak havoc on a ship, especially if they had a home field advantage.

They were patrolling the lower levels of the ship. Looking through every nook and cranny, scanning the hallway for any tripwires or explosive substances. The patrols had been doing the rounds for the last hour. At first there was a gunfight reported every few minutes but for the last ten it had been quiet.

Griff nudged McCullen and pointed to spot a few meters ahead of them. It looked like there was nothing there for the unaugmented sight of McCullen

"Tripwire, no explosive so it's probably an alarm."

McCullen knelt down and squinted, trying to spot the wire or the tiny laser emitters.

"Got it, moving to disarm."

He took the wire cutters and EMP prod out of his chest bandolier, checking the latter if it still had sufficient charge to function. A few careful steps took him right next to the wire that would be unnoticeable without someone with a VISR attachment on their helmet.

The EMP prod was pressed against the spot where the wire came out of the wall. Wire cutters were on standby. The main purpose was to temporarily short circuit the sensors measuring the tautness of the wire Cut the cord while the system is down and the software that boots up the system will register the new wire tension as it's default one and the alarm won't trigger.

But as McCullen cut the slim string of metal a mechanical _***clunk***_ was heard by the two men. A red energy field sprung up a dozen meters behind them.

They went on high alert, their tools were discarded and rifles aimed down-range, they were ready for a charge of wild moa if it came down to it. Nothing happened. No gunfire. No grenades rolling down the hallway. No crazed aliens with an axe. Nothing. Nada.

The silence was only disturbed by the faint hum of the barrier. Scanning their vicinity nervously, they backed towards the energy field.

"Griff, cover me. I'll check the barrier."

Griff stopped, growing ever more tense as nothing happened she started silently muttering to herself.

"This silence almost makes me wish for an ambush."

McCullen moved to the barrier, pulling out his combat knife when we was just in front of it. The best way to learn about things is to poke it. So he thrust at the barrier with his knife. It didn't pierce the field. Only result was that his knife now sported fresh carbon scarring on the tip where it touched the barrier.

"Don't touch this thing, it's superheated. I'll call it in for command."

McCullen pressed the activator on his helmet radio and flipped it to the main channel.

"Command, Wolf 4-1 here, Wolf 4-2 and I activated some sort of energy barrier at corridor Echo 8 at sublevel 6. We are cut off, no enemy presence at this moment. What's our next course of action?"

It took only a moment for the colonel to respond.

"Copy that 4-1 I'll have an engineering team at your location in five mikes, continue your search pattern."

"Roger that, resuming patrol."

McCullen snapped his rifle up from its hanging position and moved to Griff's side.

"You watch left and I'll take right."

The two of them slowly crept forward, meticulously checking each crevice where something could hide until they turned the corner and came face to face with a robot of some kind.

It had a very human shape with huge eyes. It was missing it's right arm and was painted a rustic red.

It started babbling in some unknown language with a really annoying tone. All the while swinging its lone arm around hysterically.

The two Marines looked at eachother for a moment. Griff was the one to break the silence.

"What the fuck is this guy on about?"

As soon as Griff opened her mouth the robot stopped moving and talking. Instead appeared to be listening.

When she stopped talking the robot emitted a few weird noises. Something akin to an old hard-drive booting up after a long time of disuse.

"Greetings, I am Z-RA6, human cyborg relations. Programmed for etiquette and translation. How may I be of service?"

McCullen was baffled, how is the hell was this robot speaking their language? None of the aliens understood what they were saying and vice versa. And now this half broken robot here spoke an almost pure human basic. A mixture of languages from earth that had become the official main language in human space.

"How do you speak our language?"

The robot looked delighted. It was like someone told it that it would actually be getting hazard pay. After years of service.

"Language archived as unknown ancient humanoid language number 604. Last editing date for the file was recorded 35 579 galactic years ago."

McCullen pressed the radio button again.

"Colonel… we found a robot here. You might want to hear what it has to say."

- **UNSC Preston's Will** -

Adama was disgusted. There was no word other than atrocious to describe what he was seeing. Dozens of animal cages were piled upon each other, most having one or more occupant.

Those in the cages were orange skinned with two appendages extending from their heads. They looked similar in that way to the multi colored aliens he had seen being escorted to the brig.

But whilst those were strong with some even having double chins, these were obviously malnourished and bruised, their wounds poorly dressed, or entirely untreated. Some had died in their cages and left there to rot, the sickly sweet stench of spoiling meat mixing with piss, shit and (sweat? or go poetic.. fear?). Male. Female. Adult or child. It didn't matter, they all lay in their own waste with the dead between them. The people were so weak that they had to be physically helped out of the cages and onto stretchers used to transport them to the doctors.

The more seriously injured were transported to the small medbay on the Preston's Will for the qualified doctors to care for them. The rest were taken to the mess hall of the newly acquired ship to be treated my marine medics.

"Really bad organization, undisciplined crew, battered ship and now slaves. This is definitely a pirate ship."

Adama turned to the door, hit the activator and walked through, heading for the bridge. His four ODST escort fell into a diamond formation around him.

There was the occasional pool of blood where the bodies had been picked up after the battle. Shell casings covered quite a few intersections where clashes had happened between the two opposing forces.

After a five minute walk the captain was in front of the heavy duty blast doors leading to the bridge. The lead ODST took a large hammer usually used for breaching wooden doors from one of his squadmates.

Adama sighed.

"Must we do this?"

The ODST got into position in front of the door.

"'Fraid so sir. External keypad took a full blast from one of their rifles. We haven't been able to repair it yet."

He then proceeded to slam the heavy breaching hammer at the door, making a loud sound of metal on metal ring out.

"OPEN UP YA IMBECILES!"

Adama didn't even bat an eyelash over the informality. They were spec ops, enough said.

The door started to open… and then it stopped on the halfway point.

"Sorry sir. This tub isn't in the best of shapes. ORLANDO! Get your pointy eared ass off that console and look over the servos again!"

The lead trooper shrugged and took a position under the half opened door with his hands clashed together in the direction of the captain.

"Up and at 'em Sir?"

William just glared at the corporal and replied tersely.

"I'm old enough to be your grandfather, corporal Oxcross. We can wait for them to fix the door."

"I got it! Hydraulic pump has a popped safety. I'll just reset it and we'll be golden."

"I would believe you but you said the same thing the last three times and it's still broken."

"This thing has seen at least a century of constant use according to the wear on the metal here. You try being used a hundred years in a row and not have any parts acting up. These things take patience. Done by the way. Restart the sequence."

The door finally opened, very slowly and carefully, but it still opened. The inside was a mess. Blood splatters everywhere, blackened pockmarks where the crew had wildly fired their blasters during the initial breach, and a few blackened console. Two ODST were walking past the monitors, carrying a dead pirate towards the trash chute that seemed to be able to fit the alien.

A large part of the wall and floor next to the door had been stripped off, exposing the myriad of wiring and mechanical parts that lay under the metal covering normally. Down in the hole there was a single guy in yellow engineer hazard suit, his legs the only things sticking out as he was squished into the hole, another marine was crouched on the edge of the hole, handing him down parts and tools.

The ship's science officer was behind a console, trying, and failing by the looks of things, to understand or simply access the console in front of him.

"Doctor Clark, status on breaking the systems?"

The older man turned around and pulled a cigarette from his lab coats pocket. A passing assistant readily pulled out a lighter and lit the thing while passing by. He took a large drag on it and savoured it a bit, then he let it out through his nose.

"I'll be honest captain, the most i can do is try to understand how the electronics work. We have absolutely no base understanding of this language. I might as well be slamming my head against the wall for all the good it does in cracking this thing. I can't break into something i can't understand. If we had a smart AI then this would be easy as pie but we don't"

Just then an ensign ran through the still open door and gave Adama his wrist computer. He grabbed it and mechanically strapped it on his arm on pure muscle memory.

"You forgot it in your cabin sir. Colonel Sanders is on the horn, he says its urgent."

Indeed, the blue light that signalled an incoming communication was blinking blue. Adama rerouted the communication to his implants and pressed the receive button.

"This is Adama, what is the situation?"

The calm voice of the aging colonel came through directly into his brain, no sound reception required.

"Captain Adama, one of my patrol teams has found another robotic entity on one of the sublevels of the ship. Interesting thing about this one is that it speaks our language and the alien stuff. I have a team downloading its translator software right now and i will be sending it up to the bridge for the doctors usage. ETA is thirty minutes."

"Good work colonel, give those men an extra ration of chocolate. They earned it."

Adama cut the line and turned to the science officer who was still smoking the cigarette, a cheap model bought on their last stop to Arcadia, picking up some goods for transport from the Abaskun community. A smirk was now on the captain's face.

"A marine team found a translator, the software will be here in about half an hour. Look those consoles over well because you will not have a chance to do so until you have cracked the system."

The doctor's eyes gained a certain sadistically gleeful glint as he looked towards the console that had caused him such headache.

" _I will enjoy breaking you"_

Adama just shrugged and turned around with his guard detail. Not his problem as he wouldn't be the one around the doctor for the next few hours until he calmed down again. They walked towards the captain's cabin so that he could finally get some rest.

Coffee can only get one so far.

- **UNSC Preston's Will** -

McCullen watched Griff regard the other marines with the story of how they found the translator droid. A bit embellished but overall it was true, mostly.

"... and then i grabbed the grenade and stuffed it down the aliens throat, kicking him away just as it exploded. The robot was hiding behind me and McCullen was on his knees thanking me for being so awesome."

Yep. Definitely pure truth there. McCullen couldn't even be bothered to kill the good mood Griff was having. He was just savouring his extra chocolate ration. He had eaten it because he knew that if he didn't then someone would just nick the thing from his locker. Unlike Griff he had been in the marines since the war started ten years before.

He was from a poor outer colony named Kama. Only about a million people in total on the airless, atmosphere lacking planet that was only colonised and put on the map because of its large supply of Painite. A rare mineral used in slipspace drive construction. The place saw many skirmishes and battles during the insurrection era because of how vital the resource rich planet is for ship construction. Luckily the small world is on the complete other side of the human territory from where the covenant are advancing from.

Griff on the other hand, she was from a rich inner rim world named Chitra. A highly developed world that was a famous destination for tourists and a large center of technological development for the civilian sector. She had a bachelor's degree in sociology from one of the most prestigious universities in human space while he had barely scratched together a high school education from self study and taking free governmental exams on the extranet. Exams which were utterly useless on a backwater like Kama as the planet was run with a strict nepotism policy.

He joined up with the UNSC as soon as he was eighteen to escape the miserable backwater crater that was his home planet. She joined because she had nothing else to do and thought it would be a neat adventure. Oh the foolishness of the privileged.

"Hey McCullen, c'mon down here and tell these guys how I castrated one of those pig creatures mid-fight."

He cracked a smile at that. He had been the one who shot the family jewels off one of those brown aliens. No reason to spoil a good story with reality I guess, besides no reason to risk alienating her, he liked her too much to do that.

"Will do Griff… So we were at sublevel 5 when it happened. A dozen porkies and thirty or so of the smaller guys were waiting for us in the corridor. It was us two against them all and Griff here ran at them with her rifle firing all the way, scything down two of them every burst. Then she reached them and started fighting them hand to hand. I'm telling you guys, she is a spartan in disguise. She blocked those huge axes with her BARE hands and ripped ones skull out and proceeded to beat it to death using its own skull. Then the biggest one of them challenged her to one on one combat and she accepted. She ended the fight in the first ten seconds by sliding under the guy and slicing off its nuts."

A gasp worked its way through the crowd with all the guys cupping hands over their most precious equipment and making sure it was still there. That in turn prompted a wave of giggles from the gathered fairer population of Herbert company.

"As their champion fell the smaller aliens turned tail and ran. The corridor they ran into ended with an airlock so we think they spaced themselves rather than face her."

'In truth it was just a wounded piggy and two brownies. The piggy died of its wounds and the two brownies were killed by me'

The story time continued as the company of off duty marines had nothing else to do. Except Colbert, he was playing Pokemon 2532 in his bunk. McCullen laid back down onto his bedding, flashing a smile back at Griff who looked very gratefully to him for not calling her out on the bullshit.

- **UNSC Preston's Will** -

Adama stood over the central holotable of the Preston's Wills bridge. Gathered around the table stood his senior officers and their chief scientist.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are here to discuss the findings of doctor Clark about the situation we find ourselves in."

Everyone who looked a bit bored or tired before straightened themselves, trying to look more attentive and serious. Everyone wanted to know what the hell was going on and who the new kids on the block were.

The doctor cleared his throat.

"As our dear Captain said just now, I have cracked the coding on the main computer of the unknown ship. And what I found is simply baffling. Look at this."

He pressed a few holographic buttons on the table and suddenly a large image of a galaxy was projected over the table.

"Now tell me what you see."

The sensors officer squinted his eyes at the projection while the communications officer traded glances with the weapons officer.

"A… galaxy, sir?"

Alex 'miss' Scarlatina, the sensors officer, was the first to offer the obvious answer to the question.

"True, but what galaxy is it?"

Now everyone was stumped. Well, everyone knew what the milky way looked like. And most could recognise andromeda. But that was it. Anything further and you were a physicists squinting through your Telescope.

"Now would you believe me if i told you that this here is the milky way."

Everyone was now looking at him like he was stupid. The milky way did not look like that, where were the spiral arms? Even the star density was wrong.

"It's true, look at this simulation i had the main computer make."

The unknown galaxy was replaced by their home galaxy, the milky way was as everyone remembered her. Then it showed another galaxy approaching the milky way and finally colliding with it. Then the simulation paused.

"This happened approximately one and a half million years ago, something sped up the approach rate of the Andromeda to the Milky way."

The video restarted again, showing how the two galaxies formed into one, the Milkomeda. Now the galaxy actually looked quite similar to the one they had seen before.

"Now age the galaxy for another hundred thousand years and you get the galaxy where we are now."

Adama managed to retain a cool head while his officers started chattering amongst themselves. They were all terrified, the comms officer even suggesting that the retrieved galaxy map was corrupted for it to show something so absurd. The chatter grew louder and louder until he could no longer even hear himself think. A small fight was starting to break out between Clarke and the weapons officer.

"QUIET!"

A silence fell over the room. The weapons officers fist was inches away from Clarke's face. The sensors officer and Helmsman were holding each other's uniform fronts, clearly ready to come to blows.

"Fighting eachother changes nothing, we will still be in the same situation. Sit down people and let's hear out what the good doctor has to say."

Everyone sat down and Clarke straightened out his coat again before clearing his throat again.

"Yes, yes. I am suggesting that we indeed were trapped in slipspace for a time which for us lasted twenty minutes and fifty six seconds but what for the rest of the galaxy was almost two million standard sol years."

"From what i can deduce from the data we got from the 'protocol droid' some remains of our civilization were discovered and studied by an 'infinite empire' about 35 000 years ago and that they used another language named 'forerunner' to translate it and use that databank as a futuristic rosetta stone..."

Adama raised his hand, stopping Clarke from continuing.

"Then if what you say is true, how did we see humans in that ship?"

Clarke clicked his tongue at that.

"A galaxy wide catastrophe that lasts for thousands of years did not kill our species. The calamity in the galaxy must have tossed human colonised worlds throughout the galaxy. That would explain how humanity is the most numerous species in the galaxy with homeworlds all over the place."

The entire bridge crew paused at that. They let it sink into them, the thoughts of being the last of their species disappeared, to be replaced by joy and relief for a moment, then to be brought crashing down as they realised that all of their loved ones were dead, everyone they knew was long turned into cosmic dust and forgotten by all but themselves.

The map was zoomed in by the doctor, showing a small system with a brown dwarf in the center. Around the dwarf floated a dozen smaller planetoids.

"This is the Goonan system, an insignificant place in the 'outer rim' of the galaxy and our current location. The database on this ship says that the pirates and slavers of the ship, which by the way is an ex 'galactic republic' hammerhead class cruiser if you can believe that,have a base on the second planet from the brown dwarf."

"Do the records you recovered give you any idea what is going on in the galaxy right now?"

Clarke zoomed the map out again, displaying the galaxy in two cours, purple and yellow. The purple one had the most territory with the yellow one spread out in four separate clusters in the outer rim.

"We have arrived at the end of a three year galactic war between the Galactic Republic and the Confederation of Independent Systems. The Galactic Republic has just won a string of large victories and is now moving in for the kill if you believe the news broadcasts."

Weps turned around and walked off.

"At least we are not in the midst of a heated conflict but at the end of one. Things can only go better after a large war."

Adama just hid the small grin the black woman's complete disregard for etiquette had brought on. He had served with these people so long that he knew she didn't mean anything by it and there is no reason to cause tension among his subordinates.

"Everyone but essential personnel is dismissed. Get back to your duties people."

The bridge emptied of people, only the captain and the two on duty officers remaining. At this rotation it was the helmsman and sensors officer.

Both men had their synthetic coffee to stay awake. Scarlatina was typing away at the console in front of him. Probably still trying to bring the secondary array online. And Vladimir was sleeping in his pilot chair.

"HELM!"

Adamas shout shocked Vladimir awake. He jumped up and into a crisp salute even though he was clearly half asleep.

Adama waited for a moment for him to get his bearings before answering his salute and letting him go into a less rigid stance.

"Orders sir?"

"Disconnect docking ports. Change heading 23 x-axis, -67 y-axis. Quarter burn. Scarlatina, get that sensor array online asap, I want to see precisely what hellhole we are sailing into. Alert me when you get it working."

Vladimir climbed back to his chair and started fiddling with the interface.

"Aye, disconnecting docking ports, setting course for twenty three and minus sixty seven."

AN: I hate writing dialogues.


	4. Chapter 4

AN **:Again i have to thank my wonderful beta, Taffeling, she is as i said, wonderful. But i have to say that from this point onwards i will try to pull all cost related data from the star wars combine website because they actually give me hard numbers. Everything i won't get from there will be guesstimated. Also, the halopedia ship tonnages don't make any sense when compared to the star wars equivalents. Seriously, a dp20 gunship has the same tonnage as a halberd class gunship although the gunship is about four times smaller. So i will be using analogues from star wars ships as they make more sense to me.**

 **As you guys may have noticed, I'm updating this weekly. You can thank Coeur Al'Aran (whose RWBY fics are fantastic) for that as one of the ideas I have gotten from reading his/her stories. The forced update schedule keeps me writing.**

Adama woke. Not with a start or jerk. It was nothing special, just the regular fading of sleepiness and growing awareness. He yawned and threw his feet over the bunks side.

The captain of a halberd class destroyer did not get any creature comforts. Room is ironically at a premium in the cold emptiness of space, reserved for the more important people, such as fleet admirals who'd often get their own lounge. Regular captains like him had to rough it in rooms just as small as the regular enlisted. The small room allowed for privacy though, all 3 square meters of it. The room itself was the size of a broom cabin in a normal planetside household.

He stretched and his joints ached. At almost ninety, his body protested against the double shifts he pulled and the lack of sleep. A combination of the two made every start and end of the day miserable for him.

"I'm old, but not old enough to quit this shit."

His hand blindly fumbled around, trying to find his bedside table. To be honest it was just a small area carved into the wall next to the bed where one could put a few personal effects. He only had a picture on in his so it didn't take long for his hand to find it and bring it to where he could see it without stretching his aching neck.

It was an old physical picture, worn and slightly torn on one edge. It cost a fair few credits to have it made and framed at the time it was made but it was his team so he was willing to pay for it. He had to have something to remember them.

The photo was taken at Arcadia when they had leave from the academy. They spent a week at one of the luxury resorts on the planet and at the end decided to take a picture in front of a waterfall in the peaceful jungle their resort was situated near. All five of them taking different heroic poses and laughing. There was even a bottle seen in the corner.

The first was Ash, his first love. She'd died at the hands of insurrectionists and traitors when her ship had fallen to mutiny. The image of her strung up corpse next to the other loyalists still lingered in his mind. Next was Albert, a brilliant tech wiz even amongst the best of the best, and the last Adama knew about him was that he was working on with UNSC RnD on ways to make magnetic accelerator cannons even bigger and more powerful. Then there was Lisa. She'd actually gone on to serve with him after the academy, but had been killed by her console exploding when their ship had been hit by a glancing blow from an energy projector. Last one was Marty. Nobody really knew what happened to him, he'd just dropped off the grid after their graduation ceremony. Adama suspected that he was an oni spook spying on the cadettes for any insurrectionist sympathisers.

That image had been taken in 2487. He'd been twenty four years old at that time. Young and spry, not a care in the fucking galaxy. Not eighty nine, even that age meant little thanks to the decreased aging effect of cryo sleep. Before the war a person could serve until they were a hundred years old before being discharged and given a nice military pension. A lucrative possibility with how the economy was at that time. Then the war with the covenant started and there were no further honorable discharges for the old guard.

He set the image back down and started putting on his gray captain's uniform. It had a thicker and darker upper area which was supposed to be able to resist small arms fire and a stiff raised collar to prevent choking. The only real color on the thing was the gold colored symbol of the UNSC on the officer's cap.

It was a boring utilitarian design that served it's purpose. Nothing more, nothing less. Easy to put on as well, and comfortable.

Adama took a last look over his uniform and stepped out of the cabin. The two Marines guarding his door saluted him and one fell in behind him, the other staying in front of his door.

Together the two men walked through the eerily silent hallways. Every surface was the same pristine grayish color. Not that there was anything up in space to dirty them.

Every once in a while a lone crewmember or two walked or ran past them. That was pretty standard in UNSC vessels during the skeleton hours. Minimal amount of people but still the same amount of work. The only real change was the increased bridge crew as nobody wanted to get caught with their pants down again.

Finally the aimless wandering ended before the door leading to the brig of the vessel. Because he had nothing else to do he decided to walk in.

Preston's Will had nine large and two small cells. The bigger ones fit two to three, maybe four if you squeezed them in, and the smaller ones were big enough to fit one guy when he stood up straight. At the end of the main floor of the brig waited an interrogation chamber.

All the cells were packed to capacity, but curiously enough there was only one guard in the security booth instead of two. And there was nobody patrolling the corridor.

The lone guard in the small room was sleeping with a magazine in his lap, clearly against regulations. So when Adama went to the door he pressed the alert key extra hard on the door console.

The marine jumped up, dropping the magazine which was actually a SpaceGirl issue and thusly exposing his bare dick to the two men on the other side of the reinforced glass. He saw the two of them and his pants were up in a second. A second too late.

The man blushed madly when he opened the door. The salute came off extra crisp because he clearly didn't want to displease the captain even more. His right hand was glistening a bit, making the three of them uncomfortable because they all knew what it was.

"Sorry sir, won't happen again."

"See to it that it doesn't. Now where are the other two guards who should be here."

"In the interrogation room, sir."

Adama sighed and stalked out of the room towards the interrogation room. The aliens he passes by were just lazing about, trying to fit more comfortably into the tiny cells they had been put into. One was even doing pushups with another sitting on him.

His marine escort took the lead and opened the heavy blast door for Adama, revealing a scene that would horrify most, but left the captain unphased. Strapped to a simple metal chair in the center of the room sat a man, his arms tightly bound. Fresh, slick blood collected against his chin and throat, pooling against his shirt and draining in rivulets against his sides. He'd come with golden rings affixed to his cheeks, some odd sort of jewelry, and Adama remembered there'd been two rings to each side. One pair lay in a bloody pile on the ground. That explained the ruin of ripped meat to the left side of his face.

The two guards stood in front of the lone man, one armed with a combat knife, the other with an electric prod which he held pressed against the prisoner's inner thigh, continuously shocking him.

"GIVE ME THE CODES!"

"AAAAAAGHHHH"

Marine nr 2 turned around to see who entered before going wide eyed and sheathing his knife.

"Captain on deck."

The one with the prod dropped it, jumped into a salute, and looked equally ashamed as his comrade. Torture was against UNSC regulations, only a few exceptions were made to field operatives and ONI agents. Definitely not the marines on guard shifts.

Adama slowly moved before the man tied down. It was the captain of the pirate ship, reduced to a shivering wreck as his body recovered from the prolonged electrocution. It was a far cry from the arrogance the man displayed before. William knelt so that he was face to face with the pirate.

"Now, usually i would have these men punished but this is a special case, they will beat you, they will shock you, even stab you. All of that will happen until you give up the codes for your ship. Then you will be put back to your cell and given medical attention."

The man, now leaking a bit of blood from his mouth, probably from biting his own tongue, spat a mixture of spittle and blood at Adama, clearly wanting to enrage the old man. Unluckily for him, his muscles were still recovering from the electricity induced spasms and thus had no real strenght, not even enough to make it fly halfway to the target.

Adama just rose up and walked away, his marine escort following behind. On the door he paused for a moment and turned to the two marines still standing frozen still with their salutes.

"Carry on gentlemen. Get me those codes."

As the door started to close the screams of the other captain picked up again, only stopping when the airtight interrogation chamber was sealed off again. The rest of the imprisoned pirates were more tense now,eyeing him with wary eyes. They knew that they should not provoke the captain of the ship they were imprisoned on when he was clearly ready to torture his prisoners.

It didn't bother him as he walked away, now towards the bridge as his XO's shift was at its end point and the daytime shift was about to start. The corridors were now more active, more people, less running and more marines standing guard at key junctions and vital subsystems.

The bridge was just as it usually was during the shift change, colleagues chatting with each other and trading notes on how the systems functioned during their shift and how to compensate. The comms officers were arguing about some algorithm or another, Helm was just trying to shake his counterpart awake and weps was laughing with hers. His XO was in the progress of logging out his own account from the main panel that was the workplace of the highest officer on duty.

Zac Irwin was his executive officer. A good man, honest to a fault and loyal. Hates the covenant like most of the human race and distrusts anyone he hasn't served with himself. A sincere smile adorned his face when he turned around and saw Adama. They shook hands and traded a small smirk.

"Captain, the bridge is yours."

"Go get some sleep Zac, you've earned it. And keep taking the pills, they're good for your liver."

Irwin had been in sedation after an on board operation to replace his alcohol induced failing liver with a flash cloned and augmented replacement. That's why he wasn't on the bridge when the covenant dropped on them.

"Will do, but i won't be dropping scotch, it's one of my few pleasures in life."

"That would be too much to hope but Zac, you have to consider this, every transplant has a larger chance of being rejected. And our booze supplies are going to run out soon."

"Well we better get some more soon. Where there is intelligent life, there is booze. And we did just prove that there is more out there than the covenant."

Adama chuckled at that and pushed Zac towards the door. The old dog really needed rest.

"Captains orders, you need sleep."

Zac just smiled back and jokingly made a rude gesture before hightailing, for his advanced age, out of the bridge.

"Okay people, it's a new day. You know the drill, reports on the main console in ten."

Everyone knew what they had to do. Adama just reminded them because he loved the small routine they had built up. Also so that nobody could doze off and use the old 'you didn't give me anything to do' excuse. The one guy who did try it was promptly thrown into the brig for a day and reassigned to a deep space observation post in the next port.

Soon enough reports started appearing on his screen and he shifted through them.

The situation of the weapons hadn't changed as the brief battle with the pirates had not involved any ship to ship ranged fighting. The secondary sensor array was online now and able to give a blurry idea of what is going around the vicinity of the ship. Casualties of the battle were 21 dead and 47 wounded. That meant that the ship only had 156 marines remaining and of those half were WIA. Only nine pelican dropships were in flying condition and the remaining three irreparably damaged or just a pile of hardened slag. The SOEIV launch bay was still undamaged, so was the armored part of the ship's marine complement.

But the drive core had been melted into slag. No chance of using the remaining parts to even make a base for a new drive. It had all melted into a single clump of metal, in the process producing a metal alloy of immense density but depriving the ship of its jump capability. The head engineer was also found, dead. He'd apparently been squished between the loose drive and the wall. Only reason someone found him was that another engineer had finally looked up and seen his bloody suit pretty much pressed into the wall.

The ship's integrity was also a point of grief. Total loss of external armor plating in the bow section, total loss of any plating on the starboard side engine room wall. The only way engineers could still do their duties was with pressure suits. Luckily the coolant that had been injected to the reactors during the battle prevented the coldness of space from popping the reactor casing and thus exposing the whole ship to heavy radiation. There were molecular fractures in the outer plating but the engineers report that the middle and inner plating was fine.

Another separate problem were the prisoners, both the liberated and captured ones. When before the Preston's Will could operate for another four months with the supplies they had on the ship, now it was down to a few weeks. At least the sublight engines were still running smoothly.

"Sir, the planet is inside the PONR zone for our air wing in five minutes. Should I tell them to start preparing launch sequences?"

"Send word to the hangar, i want all of our birds ready to fly as soon as they have their marine payload. Have the ODST's standby for possible combat drop. Tell the Marines to suit up and prepare for a possible engagement in hostile environment."

"Aye aye sir, messages away."

-Preston's Will-

McCullen sat on a crate in the empty marine supply room, just doing nothing. He didn't really care for the company of others. He'd join a conversation if invited, or if the topic proved interesting, but mostly he'd stick to himself. In his hands laid his service pistol, the battle hardened M6G had seen him through many a tough spots, saving him more than once. Wouldn't it be ironic if that would be the weapon that takes his life?

He had been fighting for the last ten years, battle after battle, victory after loss followed by more loss. He was an old man by soldiers standards with his twenty nine years. In peacetime most of the people his age would be chasing women, getting through life and trying to set their own roots. Instead they crawl through mud and guts on hundreds of worlds in a near hopeless fight, most of them not seeing their second decade of life. Some of the younger guys were already calling the few survivors 'the old breed'. Men and women who had trained and served when there was no genocidal campaign directed against humanity, when human life was still worth something.

He had learned through Hammond, who himself had gotten it from a bridge officer, that they were never going to see their families anymore. That the jump from the battle had been accidental and it had fucked up big time. Nobody but the command staff were supposed to know, to stop panic and depression. But it was a small ship. Anything that bad was bound to get out.

A round was already in the chamber, all it would take is one bullet and he could see his siblings again. It would be quick and painless, just one pull of a tr-

"Alastair, c'mon, everyone's been looking for you. We deploy in ten."

And Griff just had to walk in just then and there. He could still do it, nothing she could do to stop him. But he liked her too much to do something like that to her. She would blame herself, think that seeing her triggered the action. He had seen chain suicides before, wasn't pretty. No need to start one now. Besides, he was an example to his men now. Better to remain and give them a rock to lean on.

He quickly holstered the pistol and forced a smile to his face. Then noticed she was in full combat gear already.

"Yeah sure, just help me put on my armor on real quick."

The standard marine M52B battle dress uniform consists of a helmet with an integrated radio, knee pads, a heavy one piece chest and back plate with integrated shoulder guards and neck plate and heavy duty combat boots. Something that is a bit hard to get on in a hurry when alone.

They rushed into the locker room of the ship and Griff started helping McCullen suit up. He put on the knee pads, helmet and combat boots and she lifted the main part of the armor over his head and helped his neck through the gap. She then closed the clasps that were out of his easy reach, keeping the armor from moving too much and tightened the things so as to provide more maneuverability.

While she worked on his side where he could not reach easily, he was putting on the shoulder plate of the armor when he noticed a partially loose clasp on her side and grabbed a hold of it to tighten it for her. Her breathing quickened for a few moments as he did that, quickly recovering as he started tightening his own clasps. Taking a glance at her eyes, making her blush a bit for some reason.

She opened her mouth to say something but then the captain poked his head in from the main entranceway.

"Hey lovebirds, we are dusting off, get your asses into gear!"

Training kicked in so both of them grabbed their rifles and started jogging after the captain. A full combat load had already been slotted into their armors pouches after the last engagement, so no need to restock. The path to the marine hangar was short as it was the usual point of entry for covenant boarders. Theory was that the barracks should be close by to defend the hangar but more often than not it resulted in the covenant massacring half asleep marines.

Battered remnants of the once 200 strong company assigned to the ship were lined up in squares. There were even walking wounded here and there. Half of the surviving marines and the whole ODST complement stood in neat formations like they were at a parade. There were two places reserved for the two of them at the back by their own platoon. The other half of the marines were guarding the Preston's Will and the Tub as the men had taken to calling the pirate ship.

The pelican dropships were still being worked on as they had to tweak a few miniscule things for the environment. The combat zone was going to be a large ship that was measured 4 000 meters long. A 'Praetor class battlecruiser' according to the info dug up by the eggheads stationed on the Tub.

According to the logs it was a pirate gathering ground, something like Tortuga on old Earth. So resistance was expected to be unorganised but fierce.

Pelicans dropped down from their harnesses, going onto full burn with their engines for a few seconds to level out. Then easing down with open blood trays to let the marines in.

"Forward march."

The neat formations broke up and the platoons split into squads to get to their designated pelicans. McCullen and his squad— _his_ squad. His men. His women. His responsibility, because everyone with rank above him in the unit had had the dumb idea of getting themselves killed, promoting him to Corporal. Him and his had been assigned a pelican callsign Zulu 908, the ship greeted them with a spray painted half naked, busty brunette marine in camo patterned bikinis posing with an MA5 and proudly presenting her assets with a lusty smile.

Otherwise it was quite standard for a pelican. Nobody bothered to make real modifications on the things anymore because they were getting swatted out of the sky like flies every battle.

Crash webbing extended from the mounts and everyone pulled them on after taking their seats. The crew chief passed by each marine, checking if the webbing was properly locked as he went to his own seat. Everyone's webbing was luckily working as without it the marines would be red paste in the event of them getting shot down.

Zulu 908 started liftoff as soon as the crew chief greenlit her. The pilot, callsign 'Lord' for his deep voice, pushed the engines to the max once they were pressurised, and they were to be the second pelican to land and deposit its passengers. The command squad with the captain always landed first on assault operations per UNSC protocol.

The marines could feel the gravity disappearing as soon as the small ship left its mother ship with its nine other brethren. The crash harness prevented them from being floating away from their seats but they still had to keep a good grip on their weapons to prevent them from flying off. The troop bay was awash with red to prevent the marines from being unable to see in the dark of the base they were attacking.

For an exoplanet the celestial body they were invading had a surprisingly similar gravity and rotation to mother Earth. Gravity was 0.9 standard g-s which wasn't bad, atmosphere was nonexistent and day rotation was calculated to be 28 hours. They just hoped the pirates acted like normal ones they were familiar with. Profesional when out hunting and just a mob of drunken people when on shore leave.

After a few minutes they could feel the small vibration that came from a vessel entering a planet's gravity well. There was no heating or anything else that destroyed every 10 000th or so pelican in reentry because of the lack of atmosphere.

"Target in sight. There are a lot of sensor signatures on the ground. Hangar in sight, eta two mikes until landing."

Last minute checks were done, armor plates were checked for any miniscule fractures or faults, bolts were cycled and HUDs booted up. Explosives were looked over and affirmed that they were still there and that they were not primed yet.

"One mike."

McCullen could see reddish ground whizzing past through the back window. It looked dead, kinda like the old pictures of Mars pre mass colonization and subsequent the feeling of artificial gravity came back as they felt their weight increase by a slight bit.

"Setting down. Be ready for anything, marines! Give them hell!"

The bay door started lowering in what was usually a decent pace but now it felt like it was taking ages. There could be dozens of aliens just sitting there, ready to open up on the narrow exit of the pelican.

As the hatch opened to the point where the men inside could see out they noted the absence of any organized opposition. The only few beings they could see right off the bat were all just sitting behind makeshift tables with drinks in their hands or staggering around in groups of two or three. Some were even singing in unknown languages.

Others were rigidly standing in front of other vessels and stacks of crates, obviously guarding them.

Most of them were armed but only with what looked to be pistols. There was a large pile in front of all the other ships. A pile of weapons of all kind. Rifles, grenades, rocket launchers, heavy guns, they had all of them.

Only real reaction they got from the beings in the hangar was a few glances and shrugs. A lone heavily armed and armored human stepped up and spoke to the crew chief who had stood up to gawk.

The new translation software kicked in and gave a text translation to everyone's hud.

"Welcome to the armistice. This station has a strict weapon policy, nothing bigger than a pistol or you will be shot without questions asked. Otherwise, the bar is in the gantry. Market is in the hold. Don't cause any trouble and we'll get along fine."

Everyone just gawked at the alien. They expected fierce resistance from pirates who were fighting tooth to nail. But here they were, in the midst of a quite normal backwater station. There were even some women with little children laughing and talking with the obvious off worlders.

"Ugh, I think we have to contact the captain."

The armored human just facepalmed.

"Nobody knows basic in here or has universal translators eh? OI! Somebody get me a protocol droid."

Another man, this time green with facial tattoos came over with another one of those weird human standard speaking robots the locals apparently called droids.

McCullen fired up the radio on the main battlenet channel.

"This is team two lead, abort mission, the locals are not hostile, we have civilians over here. I repeat abort mission, the locals are not hostile, civilians are in line of fire."

"This is op lead, I can confirm team two's report, stand down folks and await further orders."

"Copy that, team three standing down for the moment, we won't engage unless fired upon."

"Team four reverting to standard roe."

"Affirmative, five going neutral."

"This is six, our rifles are down but ready."

The rest of the teams followed, all nine pelicans standing down after setting down on the landing pads to preserve fuel. Only the ODST complement from pelican nine tried to argue but were shouted down by the marine captain who was in command of the operation.

By the time everyone had confirmed the stand down orders the green guy with the Droid had finally reached the pelican with its ridiculously slow walking pace.

"Greetings, may I have a language sample to begin translation?"

McCullen stepped to the front, seeing that he was the highest ranking marine in the craft and that the crew officer was too nervous to actually do anything."

"Greetings, corporal McCullen, first Panmonian division, second regiment, fourth battalion Herbert company, currently assigned to the UNSC Preston's Will that is currently in orbit. We can understand you but we don't have a translator with us to translate what we say."

The Droid took a few moments to dig out the ancient files in the vast database before he translated what McCullen said to the alien in front of them.

He just looked at them before quietly saying something into his radio and stopping the Droid from translating what he said.

"You the guys that took out the goddamn pirates blockading us?"

"Yes, those were us. We captured their ship."

Again he spoke something into the microphone attached to his ear. A few moments later some weird garbling came out of his earpiece. After that he smiled at the marines.

"In that case, welcome to the Albion battle cruiser also called Armistice station by some. You need anything, give one of us guards a holler. Your people saved us from losing our clientele completely. That bastard's been sitting up there for the last month, attacking our supply shipments and transports."

"But we had Intel that this IS their base."

A brief translation later and the man's face turned grim. His hands gripping the rifle more tightly.

"That's because this was their base. They were our space defence force meant to keep small time pirates off of us. Right until they mutinied and turned pirate themselves."

He turned away and even took a few steps before glancing back again.

"Oh, and the boss would like to see your leader to discuss options of buying back the ship and whatever is left of those rebels."

-Preston's Will-

"So let me get this straight. We almost invaded a neutral civilian station all because the translator software had a glitch!?"

Adama was livid. Their ship sat in orbit and the chatter of the groundside assault teams had reached them a few minutes ago.

He had immediately demanded for an explanation from the chief scientist. Why had he almost caused a violent diplomatic incident with an unknown power?

The answer that came back was simple. The good doctor had understood that the human language of their time was different when compared with the one they recovered from the droid. Languages evolve in time so it was really no surprise. But the program he had written to help translate the system had a glitch and mistranslated a word. Subsequently almost causing a small war to break out. Funny how much power a single word can have.

The doctor now stood at the other side of the table with his ever present smoke in one hand, and a datapad in the other

"That is correct. I am trying to find the faulty string of code right now so if you don't mind I need some peace."

Adamas temper flared at the dismissive tone the civilian had. He was the one in command, nobody talked down to him or questions his authority!

"Watch your tongue doctor or I'll-"

"You'll do what? Throw me in the brig? Or perhaps out the airlock like you did with the pirates we couldn't fit aboard? Maybe even put me down in the next port and leave me there? Well you can't. Last time I checked, which was ten minutes ago, I am too valuable as the last one alive who knows the schematics of a slipspace drive. So buzz off and let me work, I can give you answers when I have some."

William was ready to hit the arrogant bastard. He just blatantly disregarded the authority of the captain of the vessel he was on. Usually it would just be the brig for the man but unfortunately, he was right. Adama could ill afford losing anyone. Especially someone of the doctor's skill.

"Then go and work in your lab, report your findings directly to me."

Clarke put the cigarette back in his mouth and formed a small smirk, knowing that he had won this round, before walking out of the bridge still scrolling through the code of the translation program. Adama let out a sigh. Dealing with the doctor was tiresome.

"Give me a fucking break."

"Um, sir. The station owner is on the comms waiting for you."

"Let's hope the translator does not go to fuck us sideways again. Alright, open the channel"

The holotable lit up with a non humans face, a Twi'lek if he remembered the basic species roster the cursed doctor had given him. A protocol droid was projected next to him, clearly for translation because things had not seemed to have any other functions aside from cleaning.

"Greetings human, we welcome you to our space."

"The UNSC greets you as well, station master. What can i do for you?"

"You have our ship in your possession, we demand it back."

"I'm sure we can come to a deal, of course, we are not just handing it over of course."

"Unacceptable, that ship is ours, we bought it from a republic mothball fleet and by law it belongs to us."

"Listen here, I lost fifty marines taking that ship, by UNSC laws of space combat, that ship is now the property of the UNSC for taking aggressive action against us."

"Irrelevant, we are the original owners."

"My men took it, my men hold it, thus it's mine. I am not against selling it back to you, with its crew to do as you wish. I will even throw in the captured slaves they took, we were going to take them to the nearest habitable planet but we can have them put down here."

"One million credits."

"Hold a moment."

"This is a business meeting! You can't ju-!"

Adama cut the video feed, interrupting the alien mid word.

"But indeed I can. That felt way too satisfying."

"How much did we loot from the pirate vessel in credits and valuables?"

The weapons officer spinned around in her chair, grabbing a datapad that was perched on her consoles edge.

"Roughly 700 000 credits and no real precious metals, only a few crates of what we think are replacement armor plates for the ship. They seem to be a very dense steel alloy. Other than that we also have several armories worth of weapons and a copy of their data."

"So the bastard is definitely trying to undercut us, I expected as much. Open up a channel to engineering, I might just get them a new toy to play around with."

"Aye aye sir. Engineering is on the line."

Another face appeared in the holotable, this time it was a middle aged man. The old head engineer had been a hardy old man, even older than Adama. He had served on the ship since it left its berths at Reach, or so some stories say. But now the old man was dead and the second engineer took his place. He was typing something onto a pad, clearly distracted by some work.

"What can we do for ya capt'n, I've got me hands full just making sure the pressure seals on the blast doors don't fail and take all our air to da big empty."

"Affirmative, I just need to know if you have looked at the so called 'hyperdrive' these aliens seem to use as FTL."

"Aye, dat we did sirrah. Me and a few of da chaps down hera chatted a smidge aboot dat A'ter our here werk. What of et?"

"I need to know, could we connect one of those to our own systems and not end up as a blast of cosmic dust."

The head engineer pulled out another datapad, discarding the one he was holding previously.

"By me calculations, w' need a drive frum a 600 metr shap, a drednaught cluss wold be purfekt."

"Perfect, thank you for your time and keep us airtight. I rather like breathing."

"N'prolem capt'n. Will do"

The engineer threw a quick salute before his hologram winked out.

"Get me the station master back on the holo."

The station master came back on after just a few seconds of waiting for a connection.

"Can we continue the negotiations now?"

"Sure, we accept your offer of one million credits but need to make a stipulation on you providing us a hyperdrive for a dreadnought class ship."

"Done. The hyperdrive will take a few days to get here but we can give you the money immediately for the ship."

"You will receive the ship as soon as we get the drive and money, no sooner. We will remain in orbit for that duration to defend the settlement. As a sign of good faith we will unload all the prisoners to do as you see fit."

The alien looked a bit less smug at that. At least that much Adama could read out of his humanlike facial structure. He knew that he got undercut massively but they were giving the locals a surprise. Small fighters like the ones they captured were just too valuable to them to give away, besides, the deal was only on the big ship. Nobody had said anything about the fighter wing.

The negotiations were thusly concluded, the projections of the alien and his destroyer disappeared and Adama could be happy again. They weren't going to be stranded to a backwater shithole. They would be free. Free… to do what?


	5. Chapter 5

"Eat it you ugly tentacle faced bitch. Cough up the goods!"

McCullen shook his head. Hammond had slammed his cards on the table, clearly having a winning hand. The alien looked over the cards before taking in a deep breath, likely to calm himself so that he wouldn't attack the jubilant marine, and plopped a bag onto the table. He leaned back in his chair while Hammond rummaged through the bag, picking out several small pieces and closely examining them.

His marines had taken to pazaak like fish to swimming. They were banned from all the official on board gambling dens for the viciousness they 'cheated' by the end of the first day. Mostly it was just them counting cards and thusly making every local casino experience a drastic drop in profits.

Quite a few times the local guard had to break up conflicts between the marines and alien crewmembers. Once a local tried to bribe a marine to have him put a tracker inside the ship on his next rotation back. Needless to say, that guy got the shit beaten out of him by the marine and his nearby buddies.

Otherwise the last few days had been marines changing shifts every twelve hours to let them get some limited shore leave. All the hundred active marines were getting at least a single shift on the station with an allowance of credits by the captain. Adamas popularity instantly skyrocketed among the men. They knew that 'the old man', as some had taken to calling him, cared about them.

The downtime had lasted a week. A week of waiting for the ordered hyperdrive to arrive from an industrial sector. A week of engineers bugging everyone going groundside with requests for parts and data. That's what Hammond was doing, filling out another order for the engineering department to curry favour with them and make them owe him. Classic Hammond.

The alien had went away, throwing wishful glances at the bag he had given to Hammond and what the marine had betted. A shield generator they had pulled off an elite during their last combat op in the outer rim as a trophy. A useless piece of crap without one of those bastards to provide an activating DNA sample. But for some reason the merchant's eyes had lit up when he heard that he was looking at a miniature shield harness. The smuck was immediately ready to cannibalise his own ship for power converters and some more exotic parts.

Now he had lost and they had gained. Now to celebrate.

"Hammond! Come on dude. The ladies at the cantina are waiting for us!"

McCullen watched Hammond putting the last few bits and bobs into the leathery sack. He was taking too long. He wanted to get to the cantina already to have a few drinks and just relax with the rest of second squad, chasing tail and unwinding as long as possible. The hyperdrive was due to arrive in a few hours and they were pulling out before the trade took place.

"Yeah, hold your horses Al. I just scored big time, we just got something one of the engineers was willing to trade his girlfriend for. So it looks like we might just get those EVA mods we have been requesting for the last two years."

"What are they anyway?"

"Oh these babies are universal power converters. Without that the new drive just won't work as the advanced pieces of tech i just acquired for us are responsible for measuring and directing power to it. At least that's what my contact said."

"Well then clean up fast and lets go get some celebratory drinks."

Hammond attached the bag to his belt and walked back towards the pelican. Ignoring McCullens protests of needing to go to the bar and put the sack into one of the heavy duty equipment lockers.

McCullen shook his head and started heading towards the cantina that was in the gantry, a short walk away from the main hangar bay. Only a small section of the crashed ship was open to visitors. The main cargo bay had been transferred into a market, the mess hall refitted as a cantina, a larger hall made into a casino and a crew deck had made habitable and the rooms inside were available for rent. The rest remained sealed and guarded.

The bar, or cantina as the locals called it, was not packed full of people. It was a lot more sedated affair with only the small band playing a catchy tune outnumbering the small group of marines there. Understandable in McCullens mind as the place had just been blockaded by pirates and people were still leery of coming here.

Griff and Tamm were behind the bar with Lord, drinking some pink liquid out of shot glasses lined up before them on the bar. The few occupants in the place were eyeing the trio like they were lunatics. Lord was already swaying on his barstool, his bald head shining with sweat in the murky light of the place. Made it look like a stripclub or something. It didn't help that there was a twi'lek pole dancing and that the prevalent colour of the place was a dirty purple which made the place look even more like a hive of debauchery.

Just as McCullen reached the bar with Hammond, Lord finally had enough and his black ass fell off the chair and onto the ground where he sat still for a moment before trying, and failing, to stand up. Griff burst out laughing when she saw how Lord was failing to get up.

"Jesus Lord, seems like you flyboys can't hold your liquor."

Lord just mumbled something in return, making Griff laugh even harder and falling out of her chair in turn. As a chain reaction Lord and Tamm started laughing and soon the only one of the three to remain sitting to that point fell off the chair.

Hammond grabbed one of the glasses from the table, sniffing the drink, shrugging and shooting it down his throat. Grimacing after it and setting it down.

"Wow, this is some heavy shit. How much did you guys drink?"

Lord mumbled something and held his head while in a fetal position. Griff smiled the drunk smile everyone's friends have when they are smashed into oblivion. Tamm was the only one of them to actually get something out.

"A...a…..bo...bottl."

"Jesus dude, you guys drank a bottle of this stuff?"

"E..ea..each."

"Fuck man, you guys are crazy."

McCullen grabbed both Griff and Lord, hauling them to their feet and being the support pillar they needed to stay relatively upright. Griff was still grinning like a maniac and was swinging her arms around while Lord felt like a rock because he didn't even attempt holding himself up.

Hammond grabbed the bottles and poured all the remnants into one of them from the glasses and other bottles. The end result was half a bottle of the pink liquid which went into his backpack.

McCullen turned to the barman who was glaring at the two sober marines for taking away the easily malleable customers.

"What the hell was that stuff you served them?"

"Mad Mrelf, straight from Corellia. Those three did ask for the strongest liquor i had, well they got it. So you gonna pay or what?"

McCullen pulled out the chit the supply officer had given to each team leader. The chit came loaded with an allowance of five hundred credits and he watched as it was drained by more than half.

"Allright. Hammond, grab Tamm and let's get out of here. These three are way too far gone."

"Sure thing Al."

The two started dragging their companions along out of the establishment. Almost getting into a fistfight because Griff decided to grab a drink from a burly alien that looked like it was a purple but hairless variant of the walking carpet they killed on the pirate ship.

They got rid of him by tossing the half drained credit chit at him. The alien caught it and headed straight towards the bar, ordering two of the same drink he had before for the money he had gotten.

The fivesome finally stumbled out of the establishment. Griff trying to drag McCullen back in and Lord being sound asleep did not make it easy to walk towards the hangar. Hammond had a much easier time, only having to help along Tamm who was a born alcoholic so could hold his liquor better.

After the cantina disappeared behind the first corner Griff needed another outlet for her drunken actions and started petting McCullens helmet.

"I would never have guessed you had such smooth hair, Alastair. I love it."

Hammond burst out laughing at that and released his hold on Tamm, who just fell face first to the ground. The curses that came out of his mouth did every marine in the galaxy proud as he started insulting the floor, hitting it with his fist and yelling.

"Come at me bitch. Huh, are you too scared you metallic piece of shit, too scared to hit back. Huh? Run to your momma factory where she can melt your rusty fucking ass back into something actually useful."

McCullen was too busy trying to fend off the wandering hands of Griff and keeping Lord from faceplanting that he completely missed the comedy behind him.

Finally Tamm decided the floor was not worth his time and staggered to an upwards position, throwing his body weight forwards and stumbling towards the hangar.

Seeing that, McCullen pushed Lord onto Hammond and continued on with Griff who was letting her hands loose on her superior. Grabbing and squeezing his ass, feeling up his muscles where they were unarmored. While slurring some lines that she must have thought seductive.

"C'mon Al. Let's rent a cabin and have a greeat tiiime. I think the Tavern is that way. No to the right not the left. To the left is the hanga-. Ooh. I like your style stud. You're going to take me in the pelican while everyone is watching. Naughty boy."

"Griff. From here on out you are banned from drinking hard liquor."

"Ah c'mon, live a little."

"I ain't got any time, I gotta take care of you jackasses."

Hammond had recovered from his laughing spree and was carrying the asleep pilot bridal style. It took him a few seconds to catch up with the other two, the buff frame of Lord being a considerable obstacle.

"Hey guys! I've got a question. Who the hell will fly us out if Lordie here is smashed to high heaven?"

The two men shared a horrified look between each other. The old man had specifically said that they need to be back on the ship at 14.00. Now it was 12.50. And their pilot was drunk like a russian on a friday evening. Fuck.

"Let's just get to the bird. We'll figure something out once were there."

So their awkward journey continued. One lifting a grown man in his hands and the other fending off or ignoring his charges advances. The way they took earlier, which felt like a short walk, now felt like a long hike with the two living dead weights they were carrying.

At least nothing happened on the way to the hangar. People kept giving them a weird look as they walked past but nobody troubled them. A rodian tried to sell them something that their translator spat out as amortentia. Nobody knew what it was so they just pushed forward, ignoring the ratty alien.

When they got to the pelican though they saw the marine who was left to guard the pelican in the ship itself, pounding on the sealed cockpit door.

"LET ME IN TAMM, YOU CANT FLY!"

The intercom speaker flared to life at that.

"Of course I can. I used to hunt pyjacks back home with my family's transport. How different can this be?"

McCullen and the rest of his squad walked into the troop area, setting down the drunk members into their seats and pulling their crash webbing on so they wouldn't be a bother.

"Lancel, what happened? How did Tamm get into the cockpit?"

"He just walked past me and pulled the door open! I could barely turn around before he locked the darn thing from the inside."

McCullen moved to the marine, lightly pushing the aghast man to the side. His fist Impacted the metal door in a quick staccato.

"Open the door Tamm! That's a direct order!"

"No can do sir. I'm going to fly this baby, show everyone that they were wrong in the academy. 'you can't fly because your parents are poor' I'll show those snot nosed rich bitches how flying is done! Buckle up, we are lifting off!"

Just as he said that the ship's engines kicked to life, lighting up in a bluish flame and forcing everyone nearby to run to cover.

"The idiot is pushing the engines to full power from cold start? What is he thinking? He could ignite the fuel reserve in the tanks with that. "

The pelican started rapidly lifting up from the deck, tilting a bit as it gained altitude.

The two standing Marines were tossed off their feet when the metal floor shifted from under them and became the wall. The gravity was still directed the same way though so they flew towards the right side wall.

*Thud*

McCullens back impacted the wall and a split second later the other marine flew into his stomach shoulder first, cracking his head against the ex-wall.

"Oof!"

His breath was knocked out of him and he was wheezing already when the bird re stabilized and the wall was again a wall and the floor was a floor again. The repeat of the sudden shift in gravity made McCullen fall onto the guy who flew into him before because the other man impacted the floor before him. The intercom was activated by the drunk pilot.

"Sorry guys, we are eh… experiencing a bit of turbulence so hang on."

The pelican changed direction and the now recovering McCullen saw through the reorienting ships still open boarding ramp that they were now with their backs to the hangar wall. The ramp was still open…

As his breath was not going to return in full for a while he went with pointing at the open backside and gasping out desperate monosyllabic noises.

Hammond had strapped himself in just before McCullen and Lancel went flying and was now staring at his friend and superior officer, noting how he made shrill wheezing sounds while pointing at the… open ramp.

"Oh shit!"

Hammonds eyes went wide, his heartbeat went up and time slowed down as he felt the ship start moving forward. The marine grabbed at his radio, fumbling around with it as suddenly his combat gloves seemed to lose their extra traction, finally after an agonizing second that felt like a century did the radio flare to life under his thumb. The static sound coming from the small black piece mounted on his chest signalled that he was on the air.

"TAMM! CLOSE THE FUCKING DOOR!"

"Oopsy"

It was too late for even a skilled pilot to stop and close it before they went through the hangar shields. The ramp only started closing as they were halfway through, air storming out from the troop bay, threatening to rip out the two unsecured marines with the flow.

McCullen grabbed onto the last seat before the exit when he was pulled out. The other hand grabbing onto Lancel who had been knocked out when McCullen had fallen on him. The marine's feet were already out of the troop bay and McCullens grip was weakening. The strength of the soldier as waning as his body was pulled towards two different ways.

The door took an age to close. Only when the atmospheric counter on the side had reached a deep, deadly red did the thing close and seal any last vestiges of atmosphere in the craft, saving the helmetless soldiers from having air ripped out of their lungs and dying of ruptured respiratory organs.

Now the men and single woman were facing a completely different problem. Suffocation. Instead of the relatively quick death of ruptured organs and exploding brain they would die of a lack of air.

Luckily they were still in their combat armor with a full tank of life-giving air, enough for twenty minutes of usage. Unfortunately they didn't have their helmets on-hand anymore and it was impossible to let the air out without those.

Everyone was breathing rapidly after the near life ending event. They noticed that even though they were trying to take deep breaths, not enough oxygen was reaching them.

"Helmets on!"

Everyone scrambled for their gear that was either flushed out of the ship with the decompression or packed up in the code locked storage shelves that were installed to keep looters out.

McCullen and Hammond were fighting hard for each breath as they finally got out their personal helmets from the lockers, only then realising that in their mad scramble they had forgotten about the pilot, drunk girl and the knocked out guy. Griffs face was already turning slightly blue because she hadn't been forcing air in as she had passed out during liftoff.

McCullen ripped his own helmet off in a panic and secured it onto Griff. Seeing some mist appear on the transparent faceplate from her breathing. He felt himself calm down for a second, only to start gasping again as his body understood that he had no air left to breathe.

Hammond was ruffling through the supply closet, trying to find extra helmets for their squadmates. Lord was still wheezing and unconscious along with Lancel.

The olive green emergency cabinet was just next to Griffs seat. It was lacking the key normally lodged into the keyhole so McCullen pulled out his titanium combat blade and shoved it into the crack between the lid and the box itself. His muscles bulged as he poured every bit of his waning strength into pulling the box open out of desperation. His vision turning foggy and concentrated on a single point, the box. Then he suddenly flew forward, the knife flying out of his hand, cutting a small gap into his dirty blonde hair and clanging against the opposite wall.

But now the box was open and there was an emergency oxygen tank with a breathing mask. McCullen grabbed it and took a big gulp of it, feeling strength return to him with the gas. He then dashed to Lord, hoping to God that the black man hadn't died of asphyxiation or stopped breathing.

The mask was slipped onto him and fortunately he immediately took a large gulp, showing that he was still OK.

He turned over to look at the other unconscious man in the back but saw that the guy had a helmet on, courtesy of Hammond who was rifling through yet another compartment. The man's search bore fruit again as he found a dusty older pattern helmet that must have been forgotten there on a previous campaign.

McCullen saw the older model helmet thrown at him and caught it. Sealing it on his head and taking big gulps of air as the unused systems got to work supplying him with much needed air.

"How's it going back there?"

"I swear to fucking god, Tamm you are getting court-martialed as soon as we get back on the ship! You almost killed us all!"

-Preston's Will-

Zac and Adama were playing cards in the officer's lounge. They were in the late stages of the game with Zac holding four cards and Adama, having had an apparent streak of bad luck, was holding seven after being in the lead for most of the round.

"The problem with you pureblood flyboys is that you think like it's a fleet engagement. My father taught me to think like a marine, to go all in. After him my mother would teach me the navy style, holding back the best for last. My style is a mix of the two."

Adama looked over his cards towards his gloating XO. Staring at the four cards the other man had with amusement.

"The problem you half bloods have is that you keep going back to your small world of thinking yourself the best. A commander knows when to win and when to lose to gain an advantage."

Adama laid down his second best card with a duo of its own kind, forcing Zac to pick them up as he had no other option. Adama smiled, in a single move the tables were turned again. As a last move he placed down four aces. Automatically winning the round.

"Thanks for the two aces by the way. Couldn't have done it without them."

"Ah screw you Will, one of these days I will win. Rematch."

"Captain to the bridge. Calling captain to the bridge. We have a code Lambda."

"Well it seems like we won't be having that rematch right now. Weird, the transport was suppose to be here in about an hour or so."

"Yeah yeah, I know. You have all that captaincy stuff to do. Next time I'll beat you."

"That's what you said last time."

"Shut up and get going, they need you at the bridge."

Adama rose from his chair, pushing it backwards a bit and with one of his hands pushed the stack of discarded cards towards his XO over the dark brown table. Noting how the waxed surface allowed the cards to slide without scattering.

"Sure thing. Loser packs the cards."

"Ha."

Adama walked away from the hardwood table of the officers mess, leaving behind his bald friend to reshuffle and pack up the cards. The thick doors opened for him, automatically and his two escorting marines fell into step by his side.

Both of them staying quiet through the whole way to the bridge, which was for some reason one of the farthest areas from the officer's mess hall. An oversight hundreds if not thousands of commanding officers had complained to the designers about but were rebuffed time and time again because there was no other place to put it to. The only solution proposed was the complete removal of the room as it 'appeared to not be practical'.

They passed by many a sailors and marines. All of them saluted to the captain who walked on. He had his serious face on so nobody took offence to the old man ignoring them, continuing on with their duties.

Finally they reached the bridge where Adama had to place his palm on a pad which heated up for a second to do a biometric scan of him. A moment later it beeped and opened the two meter thick blast door.

Everyone in the small bridge was at their post, only a junior ensign giving out caffeine to the ones working behind the consoles.

The room itself was dimly lit to prevent anyone spotting the bridge through light shining through the observation window.

The communications officer, Alex Scarlatina, whirled around in his chair at the sound of the door opening.

"Sir, comms ping from the outer system, codes check out. It's the transport ship. They are fourteen mikes out on full burn, we have already given them the guide to dock cargo bays."

"Good, I want every sensor we have lighting up that ship. Evans, bring all batteries on alert. I want them ready to core anyone stupid enough to try and jump us. Major, scramble security teams to defensive positions just in case. I want us to be prepared for anything."

A trio of "Yes sir."'s rang out as the three officers started carrying out their orders. The approaching ship, only a blip before, was now detailed enough to make out its profile.

"I hope the patch up job the engineers made on our hull with those armor plates we found hold up if this goes bad."

The holotable now displayed the ship as a triangular vessel with a single tower poking out of a raised platform near the back. What really made the ship frightening were the twelve quad barreled cannons mounted on the ship, looking in pristine like they were straight off the factory line. Its size was also impressive, a respectable seven hundred meters. Also respectable was its abnormally large hangar bay on the lower side of the hull.

The ship had many pockmarks on its hull with some sections clearly having been replaced and repaired recently. Those battle scars spoke of experience, and experience is one of the deciding factors in whether a battle Is won or lost.

"Sir, we have Zulu 908 making an unannounced exit from the armistice station, they are leaking atmosphere, heavily."

"What the fuck happened?"

"No idea sir, as soon as they exited the hangar shields they started losing atmosphere, by the volume it looks like their reserve air banks were in intake mode so it all streamed out."

"Were they shot down?"

"Negative sir, it's like they forgot to close the boarding ramp."

The CAG heard them and came over to take part in the conversation.

"That's a rookie mistake. Cadets on their first flight usually forget to close the back tray or the air reserves. But none of my people are rookies, they wouldn't make a mistake like that."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive, sir."

"Have an ODST combat team be on standby at the hangar. It might be someone has hijacked the ship and is trying to board us. Get Zulu 907 out along with Echo 097, have them be armed for bear with interception missiles and ready to shoot Zulu 908 down if we get any suspicious readings."

"Will do sir."

Within two minutes two pelicans absolutely loaded with missiles came screaming out of the hangar bay on the Preston's Will. The two moved towards their wonkily flying brother, falling in behind her and painting missile locks on her just in case.

"Pelican Zulu 908, this is Echo 097, the old man orders you to transmit clearance codes and state your reason for unannounced departure. Over."

"This is _*huck*_ flight officer Tamm. I don't have any flippppin _*huck*_ clearance codes. Now buzz _*huck*_ off, i need to stick this _*huck*_ landing."

"Echo 097, this is corporal McCullen aboard Zulu 908. We have a passed out pilot and one of my marines piloting. He is intoxicated, i repeat intoxicated. He locked us out and is trying to pilot the ship. Do not fire, my authorization code is Arabella-Kilo-Lancaster-Rose-five-eight-Umbrella-one."

"We have a match, the codes check out. Momma base, be advised we have a rogue pelican with an unauthorised pilot. UNSC personnel in the troop bay report it's one of ours but he's intoxicated. I advise an emergency evacuation of the upper hangar deck and immediate deployment of crash protection. How copy?"

"Affirmative 097, emergency evacuation has started and crash barriers are being deployed, stay on station for now. We'll have bigger visitors here in ten. Over."

"Copy that Momma base. Holding station."

The lone pelican continued flying at a way too high burn for an entry to the hangar. The pilot of Zulu 907 contacted Echo 097. The ping was received in a second.

"Hey Rain, the cag should have started guiding him. I'm not picking up any radio chatter towards 908."

"Could be he is in the bathroom taking a shit. Since poor Matthew died in his bird Anders has been without a replacement."

"Yeah, should we guide him in instead?"

"Momma base didn't order us to do so but if you want to then i won't complain."

The pilot switched comm channels and sent a ping to Zulu 908, hoping to dear god that the idiot at the helm would accept the connection. Luckily he did.

"Waddaya want?"

"Zulu 907 here, just going to warn you, at current speed and vector you are going to just crash into the wall under the hangar and nobody will survive that wreck. Now what i want you to do to save yourself is pull the stick back gently and then turn down the throttle to fifty percent. The counter is the one directly in the middle of your forward instruments."

"Okaay."

The pelican turned its nose slightly upwards and was now more or less in line with the hangar opening. The speed was no longer increasing either, which was good, gave them more time.

"Now do you see the flippable buttons above you?"

"Yes, there are so many of them."

"There is one that is dyed green by hand and labeled 'handbrake'´. I want you to flip it as fast as possible. It might be a bit stiff but do not let up."

Suddenly the engines of the pelican died out. But that only lasted for a second for a second before a controlled explosion blasted out of the front of the ship. Decelerating it considerably but consequently making the main engines inoperable.

"THE ENGINES ARE NOT WORKING!"

"That's the point, you're on rcs maneuvering now. Do you see the small joystick in front of the throttle? I want you to pull it towards yourself as soon as I say so."

"Found it."

The ship was now getting dangerously close. At current speed it would still crash into the ship and the dropship would be ruined when crashing through the carbon posts that had extended out of the hangar floor. Like hell was he allowing his sister ship to suffer that fate.

"Pull it!"

The frontal rcs thrusters fired from all over the ship, pretty much pulling it into a stop right in the middle of the hanger.

"Phew, glad that worked. Now activate the magnetic pads from the worn silvery button you have right above your head."

The highly magnetic plates of the hangar elevator pulled the pelican onto itself, locking the wayward craft onto its surface before starting to lower itself down as the outer hangar doors started to close to allow the ship to be completely lowered down into the real hangar without any explosive decompression. Another layer of doors closed over the elevator to ensure that nothing goes wrong.

"This is Zulu 907 to Momma base. Zulu 908 has landed securely. Over."

"This is Momma base. Thanks for the assist. The cag was organizing the evacuation and was unreachable and we were struggling to find a replacement. Keep holding station."

"No problem Momma base, holding station."

At the bridge of the Preston's Will there was a collective cheer as the initiative of a pilot helped them save one of their irreplaceable dropships. It's not like they are going to have any new ones shipped in or built on the ship itself. A Halberd class was meant to be a mainline combat vessel, not a fleet support ship that is supposed to keep a fighting force supplied. The ship was a taker, not a giver.

The comms officer was broken out of her celebratory shout as her console beeped insistently as an incoming communication was picked up. She got to work determining where the signal was coming from. A quick retracing of the laser the signal was based on showed where it was coming from. Not that there were any other ships in the area that were not theirs.

"Sir, the acclamator is hailing us. Should i put it up on the main table?"

Everyone stopped their cheering and went back to work, trying to make themselves look as professional as possible. Adama straightened his uniform a bit and looked over the bridge, affirming that everyone was doing their jobs and looked presentable before he nodded to the communications officer who flipped a lever on his gunmetal gray console.

Immediately the central holotable lit up with the face of an older human male. He was wearing a crisp uniform with some bars on his chest and his hair looked to be in a strict military cut. Unfortunately it was all in shades of blue, the only real disadvantage in holotables, the inability to show colours.

"This is captain Jayfon of the Galactic Empire acclamator assault ship Encore. We have received a distress call asking for help. We are here to render assistance."

The bridge officers looked amongst each other, they didn't know anything about a distress call. Neither did Adama but he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth, he was going to bend with the wind. Why look a gift horse in the mouth?

"We hear you Encore. This is UNSC Preston's Will. Our drive melted during a faulty jump and we are in need of a replacement drive."

The captain turned around and seemed to be speaking to someone before facing Adama again and unmuting his end.

"Acknowledged Preston's Will. We have a few spare hyperdrives available in storage per our role as an armed fleet supply ship. They should fit your ship as they are class 2 drives meant for a Dreadnaught battlegroup that won't be needing them anymore.."

"We appreciate it Encore. Our engineers will be waiting for you at the main docking bay for the transfer of the drive. You have our most sincere thanks."

"Its our duty, prepare for docking. Encore out."

AN: I have no idea how the controls of a pelican work so I just winged it, but hey, you can't know everything. And I don't even claim to know anything close to that amount. Once again, thanks to tafferling, we might not agree on everything but she is a hell of a good beta.


	6. Chapter 6

AN: Sorry for the shorter chapter, i tried so hard to make a normal sized one but i ran into a dead end, i don't think the gun to my head helped. If you see a drop in quality then its because i didn't run it past tafferling, i finished it on sunday evening and she had other projects.

"Augh…"

McCullen staggered up from where the sudden decrease in speed that followed his transmission had thrown him, right in the corner by the pilots cabin. He propped himself onto his elbows, noting how the vacuum-proof BDU was ripped in a few places on his arms, probably from flying around the troop bay.

A quick glance revealed that Hammond was in a similar state, only propped up against the bay door. The other man was lying motionless, his eyes were closed and his helmeted head was lolled to the side.

McCullen pushed himself up and staggered up onto his feet, grasping his lower side which hurt like a bitch. He must have flown into one of the deployed crash webbing pieces when he was thrown into the air or something. Looking down he discovered his own combat knife lodged in his gut, the hilt and custom serrated lower back edge the only part sticking out.

A strange calm came over him as he inspected the wound while leaning against the wall. The BDU was slick with blood on its sides, understandable given that the wound was still leaking some blood but was mostly held back by the knife itself. Luckily it seemed to not have gone into a kidney, instead just piercing intestines.

It was strange that there was no pain coming from the wound, probably endorphins at work. He looked over the dropships interior, noting how Griff and Lord were both slowly starting to shift around in their seats, the adrenaline probably helping them sober up a bit. Step by step he staggered towards his squadmate, each step causing a momentary feeling of getting poked.

He blacked out while halfway there. It was like he was just closing his eyes for a moment when he was in the middle of the troop floor and then when he opened his eyes he was kneeling next to Hammond, checking his pulse. It was there, a bit slow but nothing threatening. He could now see the man's chest rise and fall slowly as well, assuring that he wouldn't be losing another man today. Tamm was a certain goner in his mind.

"What the hell happened?"

McCullen turned to see Griff pushing up the crash protection, and promptly sliding out of the seat and onto the ground. Her legs were probably still wobbly from the deceleration and alcohol.

"Tamm fucked us, that's what happened. Ham is unconscious and i think Lord is still sleeping it off."

Griff tried to hold her head but touched the helmet's visor instead, just then noticing that she had a plain and unadorned helmet, completely different from her customly painted one with some personal modifications on the inside. Then she noticed the nametag on the inside and looked at McCullen again, this time scrutinizing the other marine, raising an eyebrow at the older helmet the man sported.

"Al, why am i wearing your helmet? And where did you dig up that ancient piece of hardware from."

"Oh you do not want to know."

A loud creak rang through the pelican as the ramp started opening, pieces of flash frozen ice preventing it from opening normally. Slowly a HRUNTING exoskeleton came into view as it's arms slowly pulled down the normally vacuum sealed ramp.

McCullen pulled the still unconscious Hammond away from the ramp to keep him from falling down when the ramp opens completely. The knife still lodged into him now sending some pain through his body as the natural painkillers started wearing off.

As soon as the ramp was low enough a trio of medics clambered up from the sides, tossing up their equipment before getting boosted up to the still lowering ramp.

He was spotted first but was passed over as his wound was quickly determined to not be immediately fatal.

Two of them hovered over Hammond, checking his breathing and pulse while also checking the back of his head. The third one was checking up with Griff and Lord, checking them over although they both were conscious and mobile. Lord had already gotten up and was cursing up a storm as he took in the now messy interior of his bird. Griff was holding her head as a hangover was forming and Lords yelling was making her feel like hell.

Finally the two tending to Hammond propped him up against the wall again with a cooling pack tied to the back of his, now unhelmeted, head.

They moved over to McCullen again. Whereas last time his vision was a bit too blurry to make out the faces of the two medics he could now make out Kristi and Jade. The third one keeping Griff from physically assaulting the still cursing Lord then must be Ramirez, the one that has to do everything.

The trio were the combat medical personnel assigned to the ship as passengers to the ONI research base. Nobody really knows what the trio do other than that Ramirez does all the menial work.

"Okay, we are already full in the medbay so we will have to operate here."

Jade, the Asian looking woman, slashed his BDU with a sharp looking surgical knife to clear the wound area. The rags were cleared away from the wound to make room and she grabbed ahold of the knife grip, preparing to pull it out.

"Wait! Don't I get any painkillers?"

The two shared a quick each other before Kristi pulled out a wooden stick that had some tooth marks on to.

"I'm afraid not corporal. Neomorphine is reserved for critical cases in the medbay only, and even then only under the full agreement of the head doctor. We are running low on it. Open wide and bite into it, don't worry, it's clean."

McCullen opened his mouth and accepted the stick between his teeth, preparing himself for what was to follow. Kristi sat onto his legs and pushed his left arm down while Jade put her knee on his right hand, they didn't want him hurting them or himself when in pain.

Again Jade put her hand on the knife, bracing the other on the deck plating behind McCullens head.

"Okay. On the count of…"

*schk*

He bit into the stick. Hard. He could feel the slightly dusty but still juicy taste of a chemically treated bite-stick. He kept biting harder and harder as the now open wound started leaking his lifeblood. The two doctors cleaned it with precise movements before placing a biofoam hose in it and spraying a whitish yellow foam into the wound.

"Thank your rank for this, we're running out of biofoam canisters as well."

The pain that was the knife being pulled out increased a thousandfold as the foam started to work. It felt like somebody was burning his wound with napalm while simultaneously stabbing him again.

The biofoam sealed the wound and it started to numb rapidly. So quickly did the miracle substance work that as the doctors started stitching him together he didn't feel any notable amount of pain.

He felt that he could now spit the stick out, glad that it was there to keep him from biting his tongue but still disgusted by the taste of the seeped in disinfectant.

"AAH, YOU MOTHERFUCKING BASTARDS. THAT WAS NOT THREE! IT WASN'T EVEN FUCKING ONE YET!"

"First rule of pulling something out of people: never do it when they expect you to."

The doctor slid the knife into the marines chest holster, pretty much ruining it with blood. She patted on his shoulder and flashed her pearly white teeth at him.

"Oh fuck you guys. Do you have any idea how hard it is to clean that thing? Fucking sadists the lot of you."

"So you don't want us stitching you ground pounders up? Ramirez! Get over here and help the corporal here to his bunk."

The buff man of obvious mexican descent let go of Griff, who started shaking Lord and yelling at him, reversing their previous situation.

The guy gave the marine a hand, clearly knowing the stubborn pride of marines.

McCullen grabbed ahold of it, pulling himself up with the help of the other man. The wound again felt like someone was tapping on his skin, courtesy of the painkiller effect biofoam has.

Ramirez put McCullens right arm over his neck and grabbed ahold of it, letting the marine move on his own power but with much less strain on the wound. They walked out of there, the others either following on their own two feet or, in Hammonds case, were carried out on a stretcher. McCullen pointed at his friend.

"Will he be allright?"

"Him? He must have hit his head pretty hard. Unconscious, probably concussion. Luckily his skull is intact so he will definitely be making a recovery."

A maintenance crew ran past them with an industrial grade plasma cutter. They set it up on the pilot's door and started cutting just as McCullen stepped off of the metal ramp of the bird and onto the similarly metal floor of his home.

The duo set off towards the main elevator, McCullen limping next to the burly doctor, trying not to fall. His side didn't hurt really but it was still uncomfortable to walk or put weight on the leg.

A repair crew could be seen already working on one of the wings, taking off the damaged engine pod. Another one, this one undamaged, sitting below the men and women working on the bird.

The two were making their way across the small hangar, getting a few interested glances that got diverted away after a few moments. There was work to do.

The marine elevator was already lowered, ready to take the two of them up in a space that could squeeze in the better part of a battalion. The lone tank of the ship, 'Bartholomew' as was written on the turret in bright white letters, stood in the center with its two crewmembers, Elliot and Tom sitting on it, playing chess.

"You two goin' up?"

"Yeah, marine deck one. Gonna drop this jarhead off at his quarters."

"Righty then, let me clean the game up, we don't want to repeat the last time a piece got caught in the elevator engine."

"You only say that because you are the one that is losing. And for God's sake, it's called lift you uneducated settler."

"Ha, says the overeducated brit from Earth itself, I'm from Panmonia, all I need to know is where to point my big gun and how much destruction i can cause."

Elliot was the tank operator so he controlled the gun and drove the thing while Tom the brit was on the supporting machine two were old friends from the college of Panmonia. Elliot had went there because it was the best academic institute on the planet where he could learn subspace engineering. Tom found his way there because Earth, being the overpopulated planet it was, had its higher class academic establishments with with unpayable tuitisions. The two struck up a quick friendship that continued through the first round of conscriptions where they were both pushed into the Panmonian tank guard.

The two had been putting together the old chess set while bantering. The set was clearly old and partially hand-made, the pieces were either roughly cut out of wood in the likeness of the pieces that were lost or worn so much that the Polish had either faded or was completely gone. The table itself was worn and scratched from constant use, a few squares barely distinguishable from the ones next to them.

"Okay, punch it, the captain told us to guard the hangar, and that's what we'll do, not like our baby can fit anywhere else."

McCullen selected the next deck up, the marine deck. Orange scissor gates came out of the sides, letting the men inside see how the large construction lifted upwards, slowly passing lights and subdeck signs. The slow movement of the elevator was something that was lamented over endlessly. They had FTL drives, giant guns that shoot multiton rounds at a fraction of a speed of light, orbital elevators that transport cargo to space in minutes… and they couldn't make a shipborne elevator move faster than the speed of an elephant heavy recovery vehicle. One that is going up a steep hill, a very steep hill.

Finally after an agonizing few minutes and a card game between the four of them later the doctor and patient duo moved out of the elevator onto the marine deck, bidding goodbye to the two tankers who were forced to have another long journey down, at least they had each other and a pack of cards, the two were practicing pazaak for their next leave, whenever that's going to come around the corner.

"Second commons on the left."

McCullen directed the other man towards the room he and his platoon were staying in. It was nothing much, just eight three story bunks that used to be under two shifts, now both shifts had large holes in them as evident by only half of the third squad members being in their bunks. Half of the missing were probably in the medbay, the other half had been given a burial in space.

There was really no personal bunks so McCullen hobbled over to the closest free one and laid down on it, already feeling much better because of the regenerative substance in the wound repairing his tissues and stitching his body back together. Ramirez turned away from McCullen, going to the doorway before looking over his shoulder for a moment.

"Get some sleep marine, you'll be fine in a few hours."

As soon as the door whooshed shut and McCullen took in the quiet and stillness of the a bit too smelly room he could feel his eyes forcing themselves shut, the adrenaline finally wearing off completely as he was in his small bed. All the bullshitof the day crashing onto him and forcing him unconscious and into the weird and fucked up land of dreams. A place where he relives past battles and the passing of friends.

-Preston's Will-

The joining of the two craft looked awkward, it was like an acclamator class was taking a huge dump in space and the halberd class is what snakes out of its docking bay. The final measurements were being taken as the two ships were now fully docked, checking atmosphere and trying to make sure there were no airborne infections. Nobody liked those on a ship with a single air filtration and distribution system.

Adama was in the main docking port, the only wide access area they had on the ship to prevent armored warfare to break out on the vessel. With him was half the complement of ODST on the ship and a full platoon of marines, all fresh and uninjured to present a better face. The tank was sitting on the cargo elevator, ready to blow any opposition his side was the sensors officer, his replacement from the other shift offered no complaint to pulling another small shift. The man was there to remotely stay in contact with the bridge and to inform the captain of anything going on up top.

The twenty ODST were in a U formation around the two naval officers, ready to pull the two back behind them to be escorted back into more secure territory, behind a three meter blast door and a section of ODST ready to escort the VIP's out while their comrades hold their ground.

A single pelican was out on the ground, its engines detached from the wings but the burnt out pieces of tech could be still seen on the side of the vehicle. A team was working on attaching new ones they cracked out of storage. Every piece of machinery counted now, there were no more resupplies coming. The marine who damaged the vehicle was thrown into the brig as soon as the deckhands got him out of the cockpit. The man had blacked out from the sudden stop so he was still unconscious in his cell. Adama promised to himself that the first real chance he got, he was going to organize an impromptu tribunal of officers.

"Scans are complete sir, clean air on the other side, no dangerous fluctuations or biological contaminants, we are clear to open the door."

"Open it."

The plating started sliding into four overlapping pieces, hiding themselves in the outer plating, shifting the corridor plates back inward to accommodate the thick plating in the main protective layer.

The opening sequence was rather fast, revealing a delegation on the other side. A single man in crisp gray uniform walked forward with four white armored soldiers with a T shaped visor on their helmet came with him with two on either side. Behind them was a heavy duty walker that was lifting a quite familiar looking piece of equipment. A Slab of metal roughly a meter thick and four high was sitting there. It had some design differences, a few glowing lines where there should be armored casings but otherwise by dimensions and overall design it looked exactly the same as the slipspace drive most naval captains are so used to.

The imperial delegation marched forward, the walker sitting back, waiting. Adama started moving up as well, his oversized personal guard moving along with him. The two groups met at the center where the uneven floor caused by the different sized docking ports jutted out a bit. A datapad was pulled out of a holster on the officer's hip and brought up for a last glance. Adama could now see the four blue squares lined up on the breast of the other man's uniform, probably a rank marking.

"Here you go, just sign at the bottom and the drive is yours and we will be ready to be on our way as soon as you depart."

The pad was passed to adama, the old man looking at the pad, trying to discern what was written on it with his rapid learning of the main trading language, aurebesh. He pulled out a pair of reading glasses from his pocket, depositing them on his nose and reading the small subtitle text they gave him in translation.

He went through the document in full, his frown ever growing after the first page. The other officer was growing ever more impatient, clearly not used to waiting.

Finally Adama gave the pad to his sensors officer who similarly put reading glasses on before starting to skim the pad. The captains glare was focused on the now shifting imperial officer.

"So you want to press us into service for the empire?"

"Recruit your services for the empire for the standard pay of any imperial navy vessel of your ships size for a standard duration of imperial service. After that your crew would be free to leave. For more damaged or technologically lesser ships like yours we have an upgrade and repair package waiting at the nearest imperial yard."

"But we have to swear fealty to the Empire!? We have nothing against the empire but we cannot go against our oath of loyalty and service to the UNSC and the United Earth Government."

The imperial pulled out another datapad from his pouch and handed it to Adama.

"That's the imperial order straight from the emperor himself to press into service every combat ship over 400 galactic standard meters long to quell the last remnants of separatist fleets from the outer rim. Only ones exempt of it are military escorts to transport ships transporting goods to the inner rim. There is also a subclause in there to destroy any who resist as collaborators to the separatist cause. So, are you resisting, captain?"

Adama gritted his teeth, his ship was right under the imperial assault ship, damaged with no FTL ability and nonexistent shields. His main guns were charged but the other ship was too close to use them, their docking ports were intertwined so the soldiers onboard the planetary assault ship would be able to just overwhelm his already battered marine force.

"No, I am not."

He handed back the pad with the short and to the point imperial order and took back the pad he had been handed earlier. A soft sigh escaped his lips as he signed the document with his thumb. The pad lit up green as the imperial took it back and waved in the walker transporting the drive.

The maschine thumped over, the two groups making way for the monstrosity of mechanics. A few more in blue clothing with an orange jacket followed the walker, the four men were wearing brown gloves and boots along a yellow cap with a built in microphone. What really caught the eye of The Preston's Will crew were their faces and their overall body build, they were identical with the only difference being their hairstyles and tattoos.

The walker reached the cargo elevator where a retractable crane came out of its backside. Imperial engineers, for that is what they must be, clambered up the drive, attaching the crane to the casing of the drive, hitting the top of the frontal cockpit a few times to signal when they were done. The crane lifted the drive upwards slowly, careful to not bump it against anything or damage it.

Finally it set down and a few deckhands along with half a dozen of the ship's engineers hopped aboard with their creepily identical looking imperial colleagues. A marine pressed the down button and the scissor door closed before the elevator started moving downwards towards the engineering bay.

"Pleasure doing the emperor's bidding. Have a nice day captain."

The imperial delegation turned around and walked out, only waiting for the walker to cross the border between the two ships before closing the port and freeing the destroyer.

"Get on the horn with the bridge, tell them to relay to the teams working on the captured pirate vessel to take with them everything, shields, weapons, munitions, supplies. Everything. Strip it clean and then lay scuttling charges to completely destroy the vessel. Those bastards planetside sold us out to this empire. They went back on their side of the deal, i'll show them what happens to those that cheat me. Also, let engineering know that they need to stall as much as they can get away with, we need time to get everything here."

"Yes sir. Right away."

As his officer started barking out commands to different sections of the ship in his name Adama could finally leave for his cabin. He needed a shot of whatever he had left in his private reserves. Somehow he had managed to hide the stash from his executive officer this long. Two ODST tagged along with him into the smaller but faster elevator that stood on the side of the main cargo elevator, the rest scattered into squads or fireteams to do their own business, only the marines staying to vigilantly guard the vulnerable opening to their ship.


End file.
